“And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none of us ever know what a single venture of yours is!”
“And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,” replied Fledgeby, with another internal chuckle; “that certainly is the way I do it.”
“Why of course it is, I know!” rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. “If I hadn’t known it of my Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of advantage, to my Fledgeby?”
“Ah!” remarked Fascination, shaking his head slyly. “But I am not to be got at in that way. I am not vain. That sort of vanity don’t pay, Lammle. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue the more.”
Alfred Lammle pushed his plate away (no great sacrifice under the circumstances of there being so little in it), thrust his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fledgeby in silence. Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and made that bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence. Then he slowly broke silence, and slowly said: “What—the—Dev‑il is this fellow about this morning?”
“Now, look here, Lammle,” said Fascination Fledgeby, with the meanest of twinkles in his meanest of eyes: which were too near together, by the way: “look here, Lammle; I am very well aware that I didn’t show to advantage last night, and that you and your wife—who, I consider, is a very clever woman and an agreeable woman—did. I am not calculated to show to advantage under that sort of circumstances. I know very well you two did show to advantage, and managed capitally. But don’t you on that account come talking to me as if I was your doll and puppet, because I am not.”