n corners or
behind trees, listening to the conversation of people who would fain be
private.'

'Do you take me for a listener then?' said the man in black.

'Ay, indeed I do,' said Belle; 'the young man may receive your excuses,
and put confidence in them, if he please, but for my part I neither admit
them nor believe them'; and thereupon flinging her long hair back, which
was hanging over her cheeks, she seated herself on her stool.

'Come, Belle,' said I, 'I have bidden the gentleman welcome, I beseech
you, therefore, to make him welcome; he is a stranger, where we are at
home, therefore, even did we wish him away, we are bound to treat him
kindly.'

'That's not English doctrine,' said the man in black.

'I thought the English prided themselves on their hospitality,' said I.

'They do so,' said the man in black; 'they are proud of showing
hospitality to people above them, that is, to those who do not want it,
but of the hospitality which you were now describing, and which is
Arabian, they know nothing. No Englishman will tolerate another in his
house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those
from whom he does he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that,
because he is in his own house, he has a right to be boorish and brutal
to any one who is disagreeable to him, as all those are who are really in
want of assistance. Should a hunted fugitive rush into an Englishman's
house, beseeching protection, and appealing to the master's feelings of
hospitality, the Englishman would knock him down in the passage.'

'You are too general,' said I, 'in your strictures. Lord ---, the
unpopular Tory minister, was once chased through the streets of London by
a mob, and, being in danger of his life, took shelter in the shop of a
Whig linen-draper, declaring his own unpopular name, and appealing to the
linen-draper's feelings of hospitality; whereupon the linen-draper,
utterly forgetful of all party rancour, nobly responded to the appeal,
and telling his wife to conduct his lordship upstairs, jumped over the
counter, with his ell in his hand, and placing himself with half a dozen
of his assistants at the door of his boutique, manfully confronted the
mob, telling them that he would allow himself to be torn to a thousand
pieces ere he would permit them to injure a hair of his lordship's head:
what do you think of that?'

'He! he! he!' tittered the man in black.

'Well,' said I, 'I am afraid your