Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/44

 'Thank you very much for putting me first,' the fiddler rejoined, after a series of puffs. 'The youngster is interesting, one sees that he has a mind, and in that respect he is—I won't say unique, but peculiar. I shall watch him with curiosity, to see what he grows into. But I shall always be glad that I am a selfish brute of a bachelor, that I never invested in that class of goods.'

'Well, you are comforting. You would spoil him more than I do,' said Amanda.

'Possibly, but it would be in a different way. I wouldn't tell him every three minutes that his father was a duke.'

'A duke I never mentioned!' the little dressmaker cried, with eagerness. 'I never specified any rank, nor said a word about any one in particular. I never so much as insinuated the name of his lordship. But I may have said that if the truth was to be found out, he might be proved to be connected—in the way of cousinship, or something of the kind—with the highest in the land. I should have thought myself wanting if I hadn't given him a glimpse of that. But there is one thing I have always added—that the truth never is found out.'

'You are still more comforting than I!' Mr. Vetch exclaimed. He continued to watch her, with his charitable, round-faced smile, and then he said, 'You won't do what I say; so what is the use of my telling you?'

'I assure you I will, if you say you believe it's the only right.'

'Do I often say anything so asinine? Right—right? what have you to do with that? If you want the only right, you are very particular.'