Bazalgette."
"No you will not, nor within ten years."
"That is soon seen. I call her one-and-twenty."
"One-and-twenty! You are mad! Why, she has had a child that would be
fifteen now if it had lived."
"Miss Lucy? A child? Fifteen years? What on earth do you mean?"
"What do _you_ mean? What has Miss Lucy to do with it? You know
very well it is MY WIFE I am warning you against, not that innocent
girl."
At this David burst out in his turn. "YOUR WIFE! and have you so vile
an opinion of me as to think I would eat your bread and tempt your
wife under your roof. Oh, Mr. Bazalgette, is this the esteem you
profess for me?"
"Go to the Devil!" shouted Bazalgette, in double ire at his own
blunder and at being taken to task by his own Telemachus; he added,
but in a very different tone, "You are too good for this world."
The best things we say miss fire in conversation; only second-rate
shots hit the mind through the ear. This, we will suppose, is why
David derived no amusement or delectation from Mr. Bazalgette's
inadvertent but admirable _bon-mot._
"Go to the Devil! you are too good for this world."
He merely rose, and said gravely, "Heaven forgive you your unjust
suspicions, and God bless you for your other kindness. Good-by!"
"Why, where on earth are you going?"
"To stow away my things; to pack up, as they call it."
"Come back! come back! why, what a terrible fellow you are; you make
no allowances for metaphors. There, forgive me, and shake hands.
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