Suppose we try.
Take back your pistol, which smells very ill; put it in your pocket
or wherever you had it concealed. There! Now let us meet for the
first time.--Give you good morning, Mr. Fenn! I hope you do very
well. I come on the recommendation of my kinsman, the Vicomte de
St. Yves.'
'Do you mean it?' he cried. 'Do you mean you will pass over our
little scrimmage?'
'Why, certainly!' said I. 'It shows you are a bold fellow, who may
be trusted to forget the business when it comes to the point.
There is nothing against you in the little scrimmage, unless that
your courage is greater than your strength. You are not so young
as you once were, that is all.'
'And I beg of you, sir, don't betray me to the Vis-count,' he
pleaded. 'I'll not deny but what my 'eart failed me a trifle; but
it was only a word, sir, what anybody might have said in the 'eat
of the moment, and over with it.'
'Certainly,' said I. 'That is quite my own opinion.'
'The way I came to be anxious about the Vis-count,' he continued,
'is that I believe he might be induced to form an 'asty judgment.
And the business, in a pecuniary point of view, is all that I could
ask; only trying, sir--very trying. It's making an old man of me
before my time. You might have observed yourself, sir, that I
'aven't got the knees I once 'ad.
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