Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/260

 “Damme,” says I, echoing his smile, “I don’t know that he is. Let him go to the Devil his own way.”

“You speak my sentiments,” says he.

But soon, what between the drink and the incitement of our talk, and my own new-found liking for the cully, my tongue began to clap merrily. To say the truth, I had purposed to press him upon his name and style, for I felt sure he came of some position, though probably lapsed in fortune; but, like the vain oaf I was, I fell to chattering more of myself than of him, lecturing him like a schoolmaster, and informing him upon the Art of Life.

“Now yours,” I said, “to my thinking is a dirty trade. To dangle at a petticoat, and to be kept in leash like a monkey,—’tis mean-hearted conduct, not to be assumed by a fellow of spunk. Not but what,” I says, “I cannot put a proper value upon a wench. Tame or wild cat, swart or red, Joan or My Lady, so be she have colour to her flesh and marrow to her bones, I’ll play the Spaniard with the best of them. But to stand for ever mak-