“ Bellair a nod as they walked through the shop, they passed into the little back parlour, which was styled, on the half glass door which shut it off from the snuff and tobacco jars, “Cigar Divan.” Here, looking at the morning papers, they found Mr. Blaydes.
“Well, is it a go?” asked the last-named gentleman.
“Right as ninepence,” replied Mr. Pokyr. “They are going to fight it out like men.”
“Well done,” said Blaydes. “I would have given anything to pay that little braggart, Chutney, back in his own coin. Strange we have so soon got the chance. What a pair of nincompoops they both are!” ”

“ Pokyr stood with one foot on the window seat, and carefully read the letter.
“ There’s no doubt about it,” he said, shaking his head ominously. “You see, Chutney is a very excitable fellow.”
“ Am I—am I obliged to accept it?” asked Mr. Samuel, nervously.
“ ’Pon my honour, I think you are. There seems no other way out of it. Ugly affair —pre-engagement between Miss Bellair and Chutney, seemingly. But ‘take a bull by the horns,’ you know,” he added, cheerfully.
“But—but—but,” said our hero, “I don't want to take a bull by the horns.”
“All over by this time to-morrow. Be a man. ”

“ Encouraged by these remarks, Spot Glanders, their spokesman, proceeded—
“ You see, sir, you are a gentleman, and these here men have taken a great deal of trouble to restore your property to you; and if the mistake is theirs, it’s partly yours as well, for there isn’t no description of the hat and the umbrella on the bills.”
“ Hear, hear!” from all the Bargees.
“And time is time, and money too, to us working men here.” ”

“ Pokyr, with a sprightly but innocent air. “ I have just looked up your cousin, but I find his door is sported. So I suppose he’s out.”
“ George is out, I believe,” responded our hero. “ Mrs. Cribb told me she saw him going across the quad an hour ago.”
“Early bird. After the little grubs, no doubt. Had anybody here this morning, my dear boy? Looking at you with the philosophical eye of an old hand, I should say your mental equanimity is slightly disturbed. Whose pills do you take?” “ I do not often require medicine, thank you,” said our hero, with refreshing innocence. ”

“ Cribb, who was in the gyp-room, just packing up her basket for departure.
“ What do I say, Betsy Cribb? I say, get out o’ the way,” was the polite rejoinder. “What ’ave we got there?”
And Sneek proceeded carefully to overhaul Mrs. Cribb’s basket, to assure himself that she had got nothing in it that properly belonged to him—conduct the bedmaker resented very indignantly indeed.
“ Really, what a funny thing. Kind of them, though, was it not?” Mr. Pokyr said to Mr. Golightly, when he heard of the visit our hero had received from the Bargees. ”

“ All of them honest, poor fellows; and, after all, the working classes are very ignorant, you know. How were they to tell what style of hat you wore on a weekday?” “We for-forgot to describe them.”
“Ah, we did. But it was too bad of you to let Sneek turn them all out just as you were ‘liberally rewarding’ them.”
“ Was it? Do you think it was?” said our hero, vacantly—not in the least knowing what his queries meant. “Pokyr,” he said, abruptly, “ read that.” And he placed the missive The O’Higgins had brought him an hour before in his friend’s hand. “Read that letter. ”

“ Samuel.
“ Yes, it is a pity. He would have told you as I do. You must accept the challenge.”
In the end, Mr. Golightly commissioned Mr. Pokyr to carry his reply to the other side; and willingly left all preliminary arrangements in his hands.
During the morning, The O’Higgins was busily engaged in keeping up the courage of Mr. Chutney—not an easy task; and his mind was considerably relieved when Pokyr arrived with the answer of our hero, accepting the gage that had been thrown down. ”

“ We claim for our hero the merit of a different course of conduct; at all events, in the present instance, he neglected the chop now cooling in its own fat on his plate—he did not even stop to sip his tea; but the bearer of the missive was no sooner out of sight than he broke the seal, and satisfied himself as to the nature of its contents. He read, with rapidly varying expressions of feature, thus ”