“You did, did you?” cried he, with a quick laugh. “Well, I 'll bet you a sovereign I make a better guess about _your_ pack than you 've done about _mine_.” “Done, sir; I take you,” said I, quickly. “Well; you 're in cutlery, or hardware, or lace goods, or ribbons, or alpaca cloth, or drugs, ain't you?” “I am not, sir,” was my stern reply. “Not a bagman?” “Not a bagman, sir.” “Well, you 're an usher in a commercial academy, or 'our own correspondent,' or a telegraph clerk?” “I 'm none of these, sir. And I now beg to remind you, that instead of one guess, you have made about a dozen.” “Well, you 've won, there's no denying it,” said he, taking a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket and handing it to me. “It's deuced odd how I should be mistaken. I 'd have sworn you were a bagman!” But for the impertinence of these last words I should have declined to accept his lost bet, but I took it now as a sort of vindication of my wounded feelings. “Now it's all over and ended,” said he, calmly, “what are you? I don't ask out of any impertinent curiosity, but that I hate being foiled in a thing of this kind. What are you?” “I 'll tell you what I am, sir,” said I, indignantly, for now I was outraged beyond endurance,--“I 'll tell you, sir, what I am, and what I feel myself,--one singularly unlucky in a travelling-companion.” “Bet you a five-pound note you're not,” broke he in. “Give you six to five on it, in anything you like.” “It would be a wager almost impossible to decide, sir.” “Nothing of the kind. Let us leave it to the first pretty woman we see at the station, the guard of the train, the fellow in the pay-office, the stoker if you like.” “I must own, sir, that you express a very confident opinion of your case.” “Will you bet?” “No, sir, certainly not” “Well, then, shut up, and say no more about it. If a man won't back his opinion, the less he says the better.” I lay back in my place at this, determined that no provocation should induce me to exchange another word with him. Apparently, he had not made a like resolve, for he went on: “It's all bosh about appearances being deceptive, and so forth. They say 'not all gold that glitters;' my notion is that with a fellow who really knows life, no disguise that was ever invented will be successful: the way a man wears his hair,”--here he looked at mine,--“the sort of gloves he has, if there be anything peculiar in his waistcoat, and, above all, his boots. I don't believe the devil was ever more revealed in his hoof than a snob by his shoes.” A most condemnatory glance at my extremities accompanied this speech. “Must I endure this sort of persecution all the way to Dover?” was the question I asked of my misery. “Look out, you're on fire!” said he, with a dry laugh. And sure enough, a spark from his cigarette had fallen on my trousers, and burned a round hole in them. “Really, sir,” cried I, in passionate warmth, “your conduct becomes intolerable.”