'You're a quarter late, and I lost a fight by you, old girl, this morning,' said the gay man, and spat on the ground; 'and I wish you would not call me Diddle. I'll call you Granny if you do.' 'Eh bien! _Dud,_ then. She is vary nice--wat you like. Slim waist, wite teeth, vary nice eyes--dark--wat you say is best--and nice leetle foot and ankle.' Madame smiled leeringly. Dud smoked on. 'Go on,' said Dud, with a nod of command. 'I am teach her to sing and play--she has such sweet voice! There was another interval here. 'Well, that isn't much good. I hate women's screechin' about fairies and flowers. Hang her! there's a scarecrow as sings at Curl's Divan. Such a caterwauling upon a stage! I'd like to put my two barrels into her.' By this time Dud's pipe was out, and he could afford to converse. 'You shall see her and decide. You will walk down the river, and pass her by.' 'That's as may be; howsoever, it would not do, nohow, to buy a pig in a poke, you know. And s'pose I shouldn't like her, arter all?' Madame sneered, with a patois ejaculation of derision. 'Vary good! Then some one else will not be so 'ard to please--as you will soon find.' 'Some one's bin a-lookin' arter her, you mean?' said the young man, with a shrewd uneasy glance on the cunning face of the French lady. 'I mean precisely--that which I mean,' replied the lady, with a teazing pause at the break I have marked. 'Come, old 'un, none of your d---- old chaff, if you want me to stay here listening to you. Speak out, can't you? There's any chap as has bin a-lookin' arter her--is there?' 'Eh bien! I suppose some.' 'Well, you _suppose,_ and _I_ suppose--we may _all_ suppose, I guess; but that does not make a thing be, as wasn't before; and you tell me as how the lass is kep' private up there, and will be till you're done educating her--a precious good 'un that is!' And he laughed a little lazily, with the ivory handle of his cane on his lip, and eyeing Madame with indolent derision. Madame laughed, but looked rather dangerous. 'I'm only chaffin', you know, old girl. _You_'ve bin chaffin'--w'y shouldn't _I_? But I don't see why she can't wait a bit; and what's all the d----d hurry for? _I_'m in no hurry. I don't want a wife on my back for a while. There's no fellow marries till he's took his bit o' fun, and seen life--is there! And why should I be driving with her to fairs, or to church, or to meeting, by jingo!--for they say she's a Quaker--with a babby on each knee, only to please them as will be dead and rotten when _I_'m only beginning?' 'Ah, you are such charming fellow; always the same--always sensible. So I and my friend we will walk home again, and you go see Maggie Hawkes. Good-a-by, Dud--good-a-by.'