“Well, when you are in the gracious mind to say anything about it of yourself,” retorted Lammle, “pray do.”

“I have done it. I have said you managed capitally. You and your wife both. If you’ll go on managing capitally, I’ll go on doing my part. Only don’t crow.”

“I crow!” exclaimed Lammle, shrugging his shoulders.

“Or,” pursued the other — “or take it in your head that people are your puppets because they don’t come out to advantage at the particular moments when you do, with the assistance of a very clever and agreeable wife. All the rest keep on doing, and let Mrs Lammle keep on doing. Now, I have held my tongue when I thought proper, and I have spoken when I thought proper, and there’s an end of that. And now the question is,” proceeded Fledgeby, with the greatest reluctance, “will you have another egg?”

“No, I won’t,” said Lammle, shortly.

“Perhaps you’re right and will find yourself better without it,” replied Fascination, in greatly improved spirits. “To ask you if you’ll have another rasher would be unmeaning flattery, for it would make you thirsty all day. Will you have some more bread and butter?”

“No, I won’t,” repeated Lammle.

“Then I will,” said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort for the sound’s sake, but was a cheerful cogent consequence of the refusal; for if Lammle had applied himself again to the loaf, it would have been so heavily visited, in Fledgeby’s opinion, as to demand abstinence from bread, on his part, for the remainder of that meal at least, if not for the whole of the next.

Whether this young gentleman (for he was but three-and-twenty) combined with the miserly vice of an old man, any of the open-handed vices of a young one, was a moot point; so very honorably did he keep his own counsel. He was sensible of the value of appearances as an investment, and liked to dress well; but he drove a bargain for every moveable about him, from the coat on his back to the china on his breakfast-table; and every bargain by representing somebody’s ruin or somebody’s loss, acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a part of his avarice to take, within narrow bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he drove harder bargains; if he lost, he half starved himself until next time. Why money should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D. — not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in money-breeding.

Fascination Fledgeby feigned to be a young gentleman living on his means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-broking line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways. His circle of familiar acquaintance, from Mr Lammle round, all had a touch of the outlaw, as to their rovings in the merry greenwood of Jobbery Forest, lying on the outskirts of the Share-Market and the Stock Exchange.

“I suppose you, Lammle,” said Fledgeby, eating his bread and butter, “always did go in for female society?”

“Always,” replied Lammle, glooming considerably under his late treatment.

“Came natural to you, eh?” said Fledgeby.

“The sex were pleased to like me, sir,” said Lammle sulkily, but with the air of a man who had not been able to help himself.

“Made a pretty good thing of marrying, didn’t you?” asked Fledgeby.