“I could hardly call myself that,” said I. “But Mr. Rattray has been very kind to me.”
“Meet him in town?”
I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had dropped into the confidential, and I disliked it as much as this string of questions from a stranger.
“Long ago, sir?” he pursued.
“No, sir; not long ago,” I retorted.
“May I ask your name?” said he.
“You may ask what you like,” I cried, with a final reversal of all my first impressions of this impertinent old fellow; “but
with unreasonable warmth and obduracy; and my would-be friends I regarded as my very worst enemies. The majority, I feel sure, meant but well and kindly by the poor survivor. But the survivor could not forget that his name was still in the newspapers, nor blink the fact that he was an unworthy hero