Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/764

330 the man, "he won't come in; for he says—and really very reasonably—'What should I come in for! I  can see a dirty man anywhere!'"

"You are an insolent person. Go away from my premises. Go!" said the hermit, in an imperious and angry tone.

"Come, come!" returned Mr. Traveller, quite undisturbed. "This is a little too much. You are not going to call yourself clean? Look at your legs. And as to these being your premises, they are in far too disgraceful a condition to claim any privilege of ownership, or anything else."

The hermit bounced down from his window-ledge, and cast himself on his bed of soot and cinders.

"I am not going," said Mr. Traveller, glancing in after him. "You won't get rid of me in that way. You had better come and talk."

"I won't talk," said the hermit, flouncing round to get his back to the window.

"Then I will," said Mr. Traveller. "Why should you take it ill that I have no curiosity to know why you live this highly absurd and highly indecent life? When I contemplate a man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to know how he took it."

After a short silence, the hermit bounced up again, and came back to the barred window.

"What? you are not gone?" he said, affecting to have supposed that he was.

"Nor going," Mr. Traveller replied: "I design to pass this summer day here."

"How dare you come, sir, upon my premises—"the hermit was returning, when his visitor interrupted him.

"Really, you know, you must not talk about your premises. I cannot allow such a place as this to be dignified with the name of premises."

"How dare you," said the hermit, shaking his bars,

"come in at my gate, to taunt me with being in a diseased state?"

"Why, Lord bless my soul," returned the other, very composedly, "you have not the face to say that you are in a wholesome state? Do allow me again to call your attention to your legs. Scrape yourself anywhere—with