"I don't see where it is yet," I observed sulkily yet sheepishly; for there was a Good-natured air about the Chaplain that overcame me. "But I do," he rejoined. "The good chance you have is of getting a comfortable place, with a smart livery--" "I won't wear a livery," I cried, in a heat. "I'll be no man's lacquey; I'm a gentleman." "So was Adam," retorted Mr. Hodge, "and the very first of the breed; but he had to wear a livery of fig-leaves for all that, and so had his wife, Eve. Come, 'tis better to don a land-jerkin, and a hat with a ribbon to 't, and be a Gentleman's Gentleman, with regular Wages and Vails, and plenty of good Victuals every day, than to be starving and in rags about the streets of a Flemish town." "I'm not starving; I'm not in rags," I protested, with my Proud stomach. "But you will be the day after to-morrow. The two things always go together. Come, my young friend, I'll own that Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, is not generous." "Generous!" I exclaimed; "why, he's the meanest little hunks that ever lanced a paving stone to find blood for black puddings in it. Didn't he give me fourpence this morning for saving his life?" "And didn't you tell him that his life wasn't worth more than a groat?" asked the Chaplain, with a sly grin; "besides insulting him on the question of Dutch cheese (to which he has an exquisite aversion), into the bargain?" "That's true," I replied, vanquished by the Parson's logic. "There, then," his Reverence went on. "Bartholomew Pinchin Esquire's more easily managed than you think for. Do you prove a good servant, and it shall be my duty to make him show himself a good master to you. But I must have no further parley with you here, else these Papistical Ostenders will think that you are some Flemish lad (for indeed you have somewhat of a foreign air), and I a Lutheran Minister striving to convert you. Get you back to your Inn, good youth. Pay your score, if you have one, and if you have not, e'en spend your guilder in treating of your companions, and come to me at nine of the clock this evening at the Inn of the Three Archduchesses. Till then, fare you well." It must be owned that his Reverence's proposals were fair, and that his conversation was very civil. As I watched him trotting up the Main Street, his Cassock bulging out behind, I agreed with myself that perhaps the most prudent thing I could do just at present would be to put my gentility in my pocket till better times came round. There was a Spanish Don, I believe, once upon a time, who did very nearly the same thing with his sword.