"I shall probably understand as we go along," said Humphrey. "At present——"
"You will understand, presently. I can't say, sir, that the character I have obtained of you is encouraging."
"Kind, however, of people to give one a character at all." He threw back his head into his hands, and stretched out his legs, and looked up into the ceiling.
"I don't understand," John Haveril replied, "the talk that says one thing and means another. I like plain and straightforward things. However, I hear of you that you gamble and drink, and that you run after dancing-girls; and that you believe, like many young Englishmen of fortune, that you belong to a separate caste, and not to the world, like common people."
"Unfortunately, Mr. Haveril, we have to belong to the world. I assure you that I would much rather not."
"You've got to. However, we did go on; I have not told the person chiefly interested all I'd heard about you, nor the half. We've now brought our business to an end. That is, we've proved up to the hilt what was at first only a suspicion."
"Again, I dare say I shall understand you presently."
"The question is, whether you know the secret. 'If,' I said, 'he does know the secret, and still carries on the pretence, the chap isn't worthy of our notice. Let's wipe our feet on him, and go on our way.'"
"Wipe—your—feet? You like plain and straightforward things, Mr. Haveril. Surely it is a poetical and an imaginative case—'wipe your feet'—upon—a—'chap.'"
"'If he carries on the pretence in ignorance,' I said, 'let us tell him, and see how he takes it. If he takes it worthily, we shall know what to think of him.'"