"Ha! old Dixie," and Cleve got up, with a kind of effort, and not advancing very far, shook hands.
"So you have got your leave--a week--or _how_ long?"
"I've arranged for next Sunday, that's all, my dear Mr. Verney; some little inconvenience, but very happy--always happy."
"Come, I want to have a talk with you," said Cleve, drawing the clergyman to a chair. "Don't you remember--you ought, you know--what Lord Sparkish (isn't it?) says in Swift's Polite Conversations--''Tis as cheap sitting as standing.'"
The clergyman took the chair, simpering bashfully, for the allusion was cruel, and referred to a time when the Reverend Isaac Dixie, being as yet young in the ways of the world, and somewhat slow in apprehending literary ironies, had actually put his pupil through a grave course of "Polite Conversation," which he picked up among some odd volumes of the works of the great Dean of St. Patrick's, on the school-room shelf at Malory.
"And for my accomplishment of saying smart things in a polite way, I am entirely obliged to you and Dean Swift," said Cleve, mischievously.
"Ah! ah! you were always fond of a jest, my dear Mr. Verney; you liked poking fun, you did, at your old tutor; but you know how that really was--I have explained it so often; still, I do allow, the jest is not a bad one."
But Cleve's mind was already on quite another subject.
"And now, Dixie," said he, with a sharp glance into the clergyman's eyes, "you know, or at least you guess, what it is I want you to do for me?"
The clergyman looked down by his gaiter, with his head a little a-one-side, and his mouth a little pursed; and said he, after a momentary silence,--
"I really, I may say, _unaffectedly_, assure you that I do not."
"You're a queer fellow, old Dixie," said Cleve; "you won't be vexed, but you are always a little bit too clever. I did not tell you exactly, but I told you enough to enable you to guess it. Don't you remember our last talk? Come now, Dixie, you're no muff."
"I hope not, my dear Cleve; I may be, but I don't pretend to that character, though I have still, I apprehend, much to learn in the world's ways."
"Yes, of course," said the young man; and tapped his small teeth that glittered under his moustache, with the end of his pencil-case, while he lazily watched the face of the clergyman from under his long lashes.