Symford cottagers.

"Sir, your manners--" said Fritzing, rising and taking up his hat.

"Never mind my manners, Mr. Newman."

"_Neu_mann, sir!" roared Fritzing.

"Confound you, sir," was Mr. Dawson's irrelevant reply.

"Sir, confound _you_," said Fritzing, clapping on his hat. "And let me
tell you that I am going at once to Lady Shuttleworth and shall
recommend to her most serious consideration the extreme desirability
of removing you, sir."

"Removing me! Where the deuce to?"

"Sir, I care not whither so long as it is hence," cried Fritzing,
passionately striding to the door.

Mr. Dawson lay back in his chair and gasped. The man was plainly mad;
but still Lady Shuttleworth might--you never know with women--"Look
here--hie, you! Mr. Newman!" he called, for Fritzing had torn open the
door and was through it.

"_Neu_mann, sir," Fritzing hurled back at him over his shoulder.

"Lady Shuttleworth won't see you, Mr. Noyman. She won't on principle."

Fritzing wavered.

"Everything goes through my hands. You'll only have your walk for
nothing. Come back and tell me what it is you want."

"Sir, I will only negotiate with you," said Fritzing down the
passage--and Mrs. Dawson hearing him from the drawing-room folded her
hands in fear and wonder--"if you will undertake at least to imitate
the manners of a gentleman."

"Come, come, you musn't misunderstand me," said Mr. Dawson getting up
and going to the door. "I'm a plain man, you know--"

"Then, sir, all I can say is that I object to plain men."

"I say, who are you? One would think you were a duke or somebody,
you're so peppery. Dressed up"--Mr. Dawson glanced at the suit of
pedagogic black into which Fritzing had once more relapsed--"dressed
up as a street preacher."

"I am not dressed up as anything, sir," said Fritzing coming in rather
hurriedly. "I am a retired teacher of the German tongue, and have come
down from London in search of a cottage in which to spend my remaining
years. That cottage I have now found here in your village, and I have
come to inquire its price. I wish to buy it as quickly as possible."

"That's all very well, Mr.--oh all right, all right, I won't say it.
But why on earth don't you write it properly, then? It's this paper's
set me wrong. I was going to say we've got no cottages here for sale.
And look here, if that's all you are, a retired teacher, I'll trouble
you not to get schoolmastering me again."

"I really think, sir," sa