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 you were seised [sic] of a fine bird like this; and so I warned our Captain here.” And then to me—“Ah, Ryder, ’tis a heavy price to pay for your good offices upon the Road,” and feigned to look chapfallen.

“Maybe,” says I, in a huffing way, “But ’twas a fair bargain, and what would you? Should a stalwart, full-bodied piece like Madam here be pulled off with a cockchafer like you? Sink me, you rate yourself too high.”

“In truth,” he murmured, seeming despondent, “you are right. I have but a poor notion of my own pretensions, and yet I will confess it has sharply vexed me to be so discountenanced.”

There he sat, the rogue, leaning easily in his chair, and with a lugubrious expression on his phiz, but his eyes, as I might perceive, very demure and luminous, shooting glances under his brows at Madam. But she avoided him coldly, and turning to me murmured some fancy jape against him under her breath, and went off into a giggle of satiric laughter. ’Twas nothing to the point, indeed, but I slapped my thighs and feigned to roar with her, while I was