"
"Well," said I, "I confess it was wrong in me to interrupt you, and
I ask your pardon."
"That won't do," said the jockey, "asking pardon won't do."
"Oh," said I, getting up, "if asking pardon does not satisfy you,
you are a different man from what I considered you."
But here the Hungarian, also getting up, interposed his tall form
and pipe between us, saying in English, scarcely intelligible, "Let
there be no dispute! As for myself, I am very much obliged to the
young man of Horncastle for his interruption, though he has told me
that one of his dirty townsmen called me 'Long-stocking.' By
Isten! there is more learning in what he has just said than in all
the verdammt English histories of Thor and Tzernebock I ever read."
"I care nothing for his learning," said the jockey. "I consider
myself as good a man as he, for all his learning; so stand out of
the way, Mr. Sixfooteleven, or--"
"I shall do no such thing," said the Hungarian. "I wonder you are
not ashamed of yourself. You ask a young man to drink champagne
with you, you make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good
sense; he ask your pardon, yet you not--"
"Well," said the jockey, "I am satisfied. I am rather a short-
tempered person, but I bear no malice. He is, as you say, drinking
my wine, and has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to
such high liquor; but one doesn't like to be put out of one's tale,
more especially when one was about to moralize, do you see,
oneself, and to show off what little learning one has.
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