Cummings.—"I take it—to denounce your proceeding as something that you'll always be sorry for and ashamed of."
Bartlett.—"Oh! Then, if you have quite freed your mind, I think I may go."
Cummings.—"No, no! You mustn't go. Don't go, my dear fellow. Forgive me! I know how insulted you feel, but upon my soul it's all a mistake,—it is, indeed. General Wyatt"—Bartlett falters a moment and stands as if irresolute whether to stay and listen or push on out of the room—"the young lady—I don't know how to begin!"
Bartlett, relenting a little.—"Well? I'm sorry for you, Cummings. I left a very awkward business to you, and it wasn't yours either. As for General Wyatt, as he chooses to call himself"—
Cummings, in amaze.—"Call himself? It's his name!"
Bartlett.—"Oh, very likely! So is King David his name, when he happens to be in a Scriptural craze. What explanation have you been commissioned to make me? What apology?"
Cummings.—"The most definite, the most satisfactory. You resemble in a most extraordinary manner a man who has inflicted an abominable wrong upon these people, a treacherous and cowardly villain"—
Bartlett, in a burst of fury.—"Stop! Is that your idea of an apology, an explanation? Isn't it enough that I should be threatened, and vilified, and have people fainting at the sight of me, but I must be told by way of reparation that it all happens because I look like a rascal?"
Cummings.—"My dear friend! Do listen to me!"
Bartlett.—"No, sir, I won't listen to you! I've listened too much! What right, I should like to know, have they to find this resemblance in me? And do they suppose that I'm going to be placated by being told that they treat me like a rogue because I look like one? It is a little too much. A man calls 'Stop thief' after me and expects me to be delighted when he tells me I look like a thief! The reparation is an additional insult. I don't choose to know that they fancy this infamous resemblance in me. Their pretending it is an outrage; and your reporting it to me is an offence. Will you tell them what I say? Will you tell this General Wyatt and the rest of his Bedlam-broke-loose, that they may all go to the"—