CHAPTER XXXVII 552
" Very, sir: you always were, you know."
" Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned."
" Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted."
" Who the deuce have you been with?"
" If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality."
" Who have you been with, Jane?"
" You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried ham."
" You mocking changeling-- fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp."
" There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I ' ll leave you: I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired. Good night."
" Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have been?"
I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. " A good idea!" I thought with glee. " I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come."