, a
jerry hat, green cutaway coat with gilt buttons, and waistcoat and trousers
rather striking than elegant in pattern. He was smoking a short pipe, and
made a nod to Madame, without either removing it from his lips or rising,
but with his brown and rather good-looking face turned up, he eyed her with
something of the impudent and sulky expression that was habitual to it.

'Ha, Deedle, you are there! an' look so well. I am here, too, quite _a_lon;
but my friend, she wait outside the churchyard, by-side the leetle river,
for she must not think I know you--so I am come _a_lon.'

'You're a quarter late, and I lost a fight by you, old girl, this morning,'
said the gay man, and spat on the ground; 'and I wish you would not call me
Diddle. I'll call you Granny if you do.'

'Eh bien! _Dud,_ then. She is vary nice--wat you like. Slim waist, wite
teeth, vary nice eyes--dark--wat you say is best--and nice leetle foot and
ankle.'

Madame smiled leeringly.

Dud smoked on.

'Go on,' said Dud, with a nod of command.

'I am teach her to sing and play--she has such sweet voice!

There was another interval here.

'Well, that isn't much good. I hate women's screechin' about fairies and
flowers. Hang her! there's a scarecrow as sings at Curl's Divan. Such a
caterwauling upon a stage! I'd like to put my two barrels into her.'

By this time Dud's pipe was out, and he could afford to converse.

'You shall see her and decide. You will walk down the river, and pass her
by.'

'That's as may be; howsoever, it would not do, nohow, to buy a pig in a
poke, you know. And s'pose I shouldn't like her, arter all?'

Madame sneered, with a patois ejaculation of derision.

'Vary good! Then some one else will not be so 'ard to please--as you will
soon find.'

'Some one's bin a-lookin' arter her, you mean?' said the young man, with a
shrewd uneasy glance on the cunning face of the French lady.

'I mean precisely--that which I mean,' replied the lady, with a teazing
pause at the break I have marked.

'Come, old 'un, none of your d---- old chaff, if you want me to stay
here listening to you. Speak out, can't you? There's any chap as has bin
a-lookin' arter her--is there?'

'Eh bien! I suppose some.'

'Well, you _suppose,_ and _I_ suppose--we may _all_ suppose, I guess; but
that does not make a thing be, as wasn't before; and you tell me as how
the lass is kep' private up there, and will be till you're done educating
her--a precious go