Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
"Brother," cries Bath, "I hope I shall not make you angry--I lie when
I say so; for I am indifferent to any man's anger. Let me be an
accessory to what the doctor hath said. I think I may be trusted with
matters of this nature, and it is a little unkind that, if you
intended to send a challenge, you did not make me the bearer. But,
indeed, as to what appears to me, this matter may be very well made
up; and, as Mr. Booth doth not know of the challenge, I don't see why
he ever should, any more than your giving him the lie just now; but
that he shall never have from me, nor, I believe, from this gentleman;
for, indeed, if he should, it would be incumbent upon him to cut your
throat."
"Lookee, doctor," said James, "I do not deserve the unkind suspicion
you just now threw out against me. I never thirsted after any man's
blood; and, as for what hath passed, since this discovery hath
happened, I may, perhaps, not think it worth my while to trouble
myself any more about it."
The doctor was not contented with perhaps, he insisted on a firm
promise, to be bound with the colonel's honour. This at length he
obtained, and then departed well satisfied.
In fact, the colonel was ashamed to avow the real cause of the quarrel
to this good man, or, indeed, to his brother Bath, who would not only
have condemned him equally with the doctor, but would possibly have
quarrelled with him on his sister's account, whom, as the reader must
have observed, he loved above all things; and, in plain truth, though
the colonel was a brave man, and dared to fight, yet he was altogether
as willing to let it alone; and this made him now and then give a
little way to the wrongheadedness of Colonel Bath, who, with all the
other principles of honour and humanity, made no more of cutting the
throat of a man upon any of his punctilios than a butcher doth of
killing sheep.
Chapter v.
_What passed at the bailiff's house._
The doctor now set forwards to his friend Booth, and, as he past by
the door of his attorney in the way, he called upon him and took him
with him.
The meeting between him and Booth need not be expatiated on. The
doctor was really angry, and, though he deferred his lecture to a more
proper opportunity, yet, as he was no dissembler (indeed, he was
incapable of any disguise), he could not put on a show of that
heartiness with which he had formerly used to receive his friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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