"Called out of town!" he grumbled. "Sudden illness of near
relative! What near relatives has he got?"
I knew of none, and for an instant I quailed before the perils of
invention; then I replied that I had never met any of his people,
and again felt fortified by my veracity.
"Thought you were bosom pals?" said he, with (as I imagined) a
gleam of suspicion in his crafty little eyes.
"Only in town," said I. "I've never been to his place."
"Well," he growled, "I suppose it can't be helped. Don't know
why he couldn't come and have his dinner first. Like to see the
death-bed I'D go to without MY dinner; it's a full-skin billet,
if you ask me. Well, must just dine without him, and he'll have
to buy his pig in a poke after all. Mind touching that bell?
Suppose you know what he came to see me about? Sorry I sha'n't
see him again, for his own sake. I liked Raffles--took to him
amazingly. He's a cynic. Like cynics. One myself. Rank bad
form of his mother or his aunt, and I hope she will go and kick
the bucket."
I connect these specimens of his conversation, though they were
doubtless detached at the time, and interspersed with remarks of
mine here and there. They filled the interval until dinner was
served, and they gave me an impression of the man which his every
subsequent utterance confirmed.
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