'
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.
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