Chapter 22 - Page 2

butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two
pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a
secondhand bargain.

'What did you think of Georgiana?' asked Mr Lammle.

'Why, I'll tell you,' said Fledgeby, very deliberately.

'Do, my boy.'

'You misunderstand me,' said Fledgeby. 'I don't mean I'll tell you
that. I mean I'll tell you something else.'

'Tell me anything, old fellow!'

'Ah, but there you misunderstand me again,' said Fledgeby. 'I
mean I'll tell you nothing.'

Mr Lammle sparkled at him, but frowned at him too.

'Look here,' said Fledgeby. 'You're deep and you're ready.
Whether I am deep or not, never mind. I am not ready. But I can
do one thing, Lammle, I can hold my tongue. And I intend always
doing it.'

'You are a long-headed fellow, Fledgeby.'

'May be, or may not be. If I am a short-tongued fellow, it may
amount to the same thing. Now, Lammle, I am never going to
answer questions.'

'My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world.'

'Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what they
seem. I saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster Hall.
Questions put to him seemed the simplest in the world, but turned
out to be anything rather than that, after he had answered 'em.
Very well. Then he should have held his tongue. If he had held
his tongue he would have kept out of scrapes that he got into.'

'If I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject of
my question,' remarked Lammle, darkening.

'Now, Lammle,' said Fascination Fledgeby, calmly feeling for his
whisker, 'it won't do. I won't be led on into a discussion. I can't
manage a discussion. But I can manage to hold my tongue.'

'Can?' Mr Lammie fell back upon propitiation. 'I should think you
could! Why, when these fellows of our acquaintance drink and
you drink with them, the more talkative they get, the more silent
you get. The more they let out, the more you keep in.'

'I don't object, Lammle,' returned Fledgeby, with an internal
chuckle, 'to being understood, though I object to being questioned.
That certainly IS the way I do it.'

'And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none of us
ever know what a single venture of yours is!'

'And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,' replied Fledgeby,
with another internal chuckle; 'that certainly IS the way I do it.'

'Why of course it is, I know!' rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of
frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show
the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. 'If I hadn't known it
of my Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of
advantage, to my Fledgeby?'

'Ah!' remarked