Lawrence Lee's case was in degree a similar one; and his own weary sensations made him feel some sort of indulgence for this individual's sulky humour. "Oh, that accounts for it," he said to himself. "Accounts for what?" fired back the other, catching the _sotto voce_ comment. "For your being so polite--and--and--" "Well," fumed the other, "people who have any manners never stop gawking in the middle of their remarks. It an't good breeding." "Isn't it now? Well, for your looking so fresh and spruce then, I took you for a scarecrow." "And I take you for a clodpole," glared back his new acquaintance with an affected laugh, "to whom 'twill be a real charity to give twopence a week to learn manners." [Sidenote: Crooked answers.] "That begins at home; keep it for your own necessities, my friend. You see I know how to be generous. But if you're really so amiably disposed towards me--" "Go about your business." "That I shall be able to do, when I have gone miles enough to find some one with a tongue in his head, civil enough to direct me to the king's palace." The other opened his dull eyes in a preternaturally wide-awake manner, and bestowed a scrutinizing stare on Lawrence. "What may you want there?" "Folks with an ounce of manners never meet question with question. It isn't good breeding--not in the part I come from." "And where--" "Where do I come from? That's a question whose answer will improve by keeping. So out of the way, friend, if you can't direct me." "Can't!" hysterically giggled the other. "Ho! Come, I like that Ho, ho! Ha, ha! That's rich. Don't you know who I am, friend?" "Haven't a notion," said Lawrence, looking away from him up and down the street, and anxiously surveying its snug but unpalatial-looking houses. "How do you conceive, I wonder, how I come by these, my good fellow?" he went on, pointing downwards. "Padded a bit, aren't they?" said Lawrence, driven to utter the passing comparison he had already unconsciously instituted in his own mind, between the remarkable symmetry and plumpness of the pair of silken-clad calves, and the meagre upper proportions of their proprietor. [Sidenote: A grand personage.] "Psha! Bah! These, I mean;" and then Lawrence perceiving that not the legs, but the pair of fine blue cloth breeches covering them, were the indicated objects, said, honestly enough, he doubted not, nay, he was sure they were, by many a long mile, the very finest small-clothes he had ever seen, and must have cost a pretty penny. "Out of His Majesty's own purse," replied the other, waxing sweet-tempered as any cat rubbed under the chin, and elevating his insignificant nose, as he buttoned on the coat he had carried inside-out over his arm, and which Lawrence now perceived to be of the same cerulean hue and glittering embroideries as the nether garments. "Now," he went on, falling well back on to the heels of his resetted shoes, and strutting forward a few paces. "Now do you know who I am?"