Chapter 48 - Page 2

don't know what she does like,' said
Mr. Ben Allen contemptuously.

'Perhaps not,' remarked Mr. Bob Sawyer. 'But it's my opinion
that she does know what she doesn't like, and that's of more importance.'

'I wish,' said Mr. Ben Allen, setting his teeth together, and
speaking more like a savage warrior who fed on raw wolf's flesh
which he carved with his fingers, than a peaceable young gentleman
who ate minced veal with a knife and fork--'I wish I knew
whether any rascal really has been tampering with her, and
attempting to engage her affections. I think I should assassinate
him, Bob.'

'I'd put a bullet in him, if I found him out,' said Mr. Sawyer,
stopping in the course of a long draught of beer, and looking
malignantly out of the porter pot. 'If that didn't do his business,
I'd extract it afterwards, and kill him that way.'

Mr. Benjamin Allen gazed abstractedly on his friend for some
minutes in silence, and then said--

'You have never proposed to her, point-blank, Bob?'

'No. Because I saw it would be of no use,' replied Mr. Robert
Sawyer.

'You shall do it, before you are twenty-four hours older,'
retorted Ben, with desperate calmness. 'She shall have you, or I'll
know the reason why. I'll exert my authority.'

'Well,' said Mr. Bob Sawyer, 'we shall see.'

'We shall see, my friend,' replied Mr. Ben Allen fiercely. He
paused for a few seconds, and added in a voice broken by
emotion, 'You have loved her from a child, my friend. You loved
her when we were boys at school together, and, even then, she
was wayward and slighted your young feelings. Do you recollect,
with all the eagerness of a child's love, one day pressing upon her
acceptance, two small caraway-seed biscuits and one sweet
apple, neatly folded into a circular parcel with the leaf of a
copy-book?'

'I do,' replied Bob Sawyer.

'She slighted that, I think?' said Ben Allen.

'She did,' rejoined Bob. 'She said I had kept the parcel so long
in the pockets of my corduroys, that the apple was unpleasantly warm.'

'I remember,' said Mr. Allen gloomily. 'Upon which we ate it
ourselves, in alternate bites.'

Bob Sawyer intimated his recollection of the circumstance last
alluded to, by a melancholy frown; and the two friends remained
for some time absorbed, each in his own meditations.

While these observations were being exchanged between Mr.
Bob Sawyer and Mr. Benjamin Allen; and while the boy in the
gray livery, marvelling at the unwonted prolongation of the
dinner, cast an anxious look, from time to time, towards the
glass door, distracted by inward misgivings regarding the amount
of minced veal which would be ultimately reserved for his
individual