"Enough," for a finality knocking the ashes from his pipe, "we talk and keep talking, and still stand where we did. What do you say for a walk? My arm, and let's a turn. They are to have dancing on the hurricane-deck to-night. I shall fling them off a Scotch jig, while, to save the pieces, you hold my loose change; and following that, I propose that you, my dear fellow, stack your gun, and throw your bearskins in a sailor's hornpipe--I holding your watch. What do you say?" At this proposition the other was himself again, all raccoon. "Look you," thumping down his rifle, "are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?" "Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted with." "You are his confidential clerk, ain't you?" "_Whose_, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in, but I don't understand." "You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that come after him." "Herb-doctor? who is he?" "Like you--another of them." "_Who?_" Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter into a little argument and----" "No you don't. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little arguments to-day." "But put a case. Can you deny--I dare you to deny--that the man leading a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions touching strangers?" "Yes, I _do_ deny it," again, in his impulsiveness, snapping at the controversial bait, "and I will confute you there in a trice. Look, you----" "Now, now, now, my dear fellow," thrusting out both vertical palms for double shields, "you crowd me too hard. You don't give one a chance. Say what you will, to shun a social proposition like mine, to shun society in any way, evinces a churlish nature--cold, loveless; as, to embrace it, shows one warm and friendly, in fact, sunshiny." Here the other, all agog again, in his perverse way, launched forth into the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of man--no envies, rivalries, or other unhandsome motive to it. "Ah, now," deprecating with his pipe, "irony is so unjust: never could abide irony: something Satanic about irony. God defend me from Irony, and Satire, his bosom friend." "A right knave's prayer, and a right fool's, too," snapping his rifle-lock.