minutes there, Harpar joined me.
He came up smoking his cigar, with the lounging, lazy air of a man at
perfect leisure, and, consequently, quite free to be as disagreeable as
he pleased.

"You went off without eating your breakfast," said he, bluntly. "I saw
how it was. You did n't like _my_ freedom with you. You fancied that I
ought to have taken all that nonsense of yours about your rank and your
way of life for gospel; or, at least, that I ought to have pretended to
do so. That ain't my way. I hate humbug."

It was not very easy to reply good humoredly to such a speech as this.
Indeed, I saw no particular reason to treat this man's freedom with any
indulgence, and drawing myself haughtily up, I prepared a very dry but
caustic rejoinder.

"When I have learned two points," said I, "on which you can inform me,
I may be better able to answer what you have said. The first is: By what
possible right do you take to task a person that you never met in your
life till now? and, secondly, What benefit on earth could it be to me to
impose upon a man from whom I neither want nor expect anything?"

"Easily met, both," said he, quickly. "I'm a practical sort of fellow,
who never wastes time on useless materials; that's for your first
proposition. Number two: you're a dreamer, and you hate being awakened."

"Well, sir," said I, stiffly, "to a gentleman so remarkable for
perspicuity, and who reads character at sight, ordinary intercourse must
be wearisome. Will you excuse me if I take my leave of you here?"

"Of course, make no ceremony about it; go or stay, Just as you like. I
never cross any man's humor."

I muttered something that sounded like a dissent to that doctrine, and
he quickly added, "I mean, further than speaking my mind, that 's all;
nothing more. If you had been a man of fair means, and for a frolic
thought it might be good fun to consort for a few days with rapscallions
of a travelling circus, all one could say was, it was n't very good
taste; but being, evidently, a fellow of another stamp, a young man
who ought to be in his father's shop or his uncle's counting-house,
following some honest craft or calling,--for _you_, I say, it was
downright ruin."

"Indeed!" said I, with an accent of intense scorn.

"Yes," continued he, seriously, "downright ruin, There's a poison in the
lazy, good-for-nothing life of these devils, that never leaves a man's
blood. I 've a notion that it would n't hurt a man's nature so m