Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/199

Rh in the painful position of a man deprived of his formula.

"Yes, yes," said Mr Scales; "I'm no fool myself, and could parry a thrust if I liked, but I shouldn't like it to be said of me that I was up to everything, I'll keep a little principle if you please."

"To be sure," said Christian, ladling out the punch. "What would justice be without Scales?"

The laughter was not quite so full-throated as before. Such excessive cleverness was a little Satanic.

"A joke's a joke among gentlemen," said the butler, getting exasperated; "I think there has been quite liberties enough taken with my name. But if you must talk about names, I've heard of a party before now calling himself a Christian, and being anything but it."

"Come, that's beyond a joke," said the surgeon's assistant, a fast man, whose chief scene of dissipation was the Manor. "Let it drop, Scales."

"Yes, I daresay it's beyond a joke. I'm not a harlequin to talk nothing but jokes. I leave that to other Christians, who are up to everything, and have been everywhere—to the hulks, for what I know; and more than that, they come from nobody knows where, and try to worm themselves into