e thing. Now, Lammle, I am never going to answer questions.'

'My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world.'

'Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what they seem. I
saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster Hall. Questions put to
him seemed the simplest in the world, but turned out to be anything
rather than that, after he had answered 'em. Very well. Then he should
have held his tongue. If he had held his tongue he would have kept out
of scrapes that he got into.'

'If I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject of my
question,' remarked Lammle, darkening.

'Now, Lammle,' said Fascination Fledgeby, calmly feeling for his
whisker, 'it won't do. I won't be led on into a discussion. I can't
manage a discussion. But I can manage to hold my tongue.'

'Can?' Mr Lammle fell back upon propitiation. 'I should think you could!
Why, when these fellows of our acquaintance drink and you drink with
them, the more talkative they get, the more silent you get. The more
they let out, the more you keep in.'

'I don't object, Lammle,' returned Fledgeby, with an internal chuckle,
'to being understood, though I object to being questioned. That
certainly IS the way I do it.'

'And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none of us
ever know what a single venture of yours is!'

'And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,' replied Fledgeby, with
another internal chuckle; 'that certainly IS the way I do it.'

'Why of course it is, I know!' rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of
frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show
the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. 'If I hadn't known it of my
Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of advantage, to my
Fledgeby?'

'Ah!' remarked Fascination, shaking his head slyly. 'But I am not to
be got at in that way. I am not vain. That sort of vanity don't pay,
Lammle. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue the more.'

Alfred Lammle pushed his plate away (no great sacrifice under the
circumstances of there being so little in it), thrust his hands in his
pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fledgeby in silence.
Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and made that
bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence. Then he slowly
broke silence, and slowly said: 'What--the--Dev-il is this fellow about
this morning?'

'Now, look here, Lammle,' said Fascina