"I wonder," repeated Mr. Jones. "At any rate, I was resting quietly!"
"Come, sir!" Ricardo's whisper was alarmed. "You don't mean to say
you're going to be bored?"
"No."
"Quite right!" The secretary was very much relieved. "There's no
occasion to be, I can tell you, sir," he whispered earnestly. "Anything
but that! If I didn't say anything for a bit, it ain't because there
isn't plenty to talk about. Ay, more than enough."
"What's the matter with you?" breathed out his patron. "Are you going to
turn pessimist?"
"Me turn? No, sir! I ain't of those that turn. You may call me hard
names, if you like, but you know very well that I ain't a croaker."
Ricardo changed his tone. "If I said nothing for a while, it was because
I was meditating over the Chink, sir."
"You were? Waste of time, my Martin. A Chinaman is unfathomable."
Ricardo admitted that this might be so. Anyhow, a Chink was neither
here nor there, as a general thing, unfathomable as he might be; but a
Swedish baron wasn't--couldn't be! The woods were full of such barons.
"I don't know that he is so tame," was Mr. Jones's remark, in a
sepulchral undertone.
"How do you mean, sir? He ain't a rabbit, of course. You couldn't
hypnotize him, as I saw you do to more than one Dago, and other kinds
of tame citizens, when it came to the point of holding them down to a
game.
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