There was a pause.  Trebooze fancied, and wisely, that the Doctor was a cleverer man than he, and of course would want to show it.  So, after the fashion of a country squireen, he felt a longing to “set him down.”  “He’s been a traveller, they say,” thought he in that pugnacious, sceptical spirit which is bred, not, as twaddlers fancy, by too extended knowledge, but by the sense of ignorance, and a narrow sphere of thought, which makes a man angry and envious of any one who has seen more than he.

“Buffalo bulls?” said he, half contemptuously; “what do you know about buffalo bulls?”

“I was one once myself,” said Tom, “where I lived before.”

Trebooze swore.  “Don’t you put your traveller’s lies on me, sir.”

“Well, perhaps I dreamt it,” said Tom, placidly; “I remember I dreamt at the same time that you were a grizzly bear, fourteen feet long, and wanted to eat me up:  but you found me too tough about the hump ribs.”

Trebooze stared at his audacity.

“You’re a rum hand.”

To which Tom made answer in the same elegant strain; and then began a regular word-battle of slang, in which Tom showed himself so really witty a proficient, that Mr. Trebooze laughed himself into good-humour, and ended by—­

“I say, you’re a good fellow, and I think you and I shall suit.”

Tom had his doubts, but did not express them.

“Come up this afternoon and see my child; Mrs. Trebooze thinks it’s got swelled glands, or some such woman’s nonsense.  Bother them, why can’t they let the child alone, fussing and doctoring; and she will have you.  Heard of you from Mrs. Vavasour, I believe.  Our doctor and I have quarrelled, and she said, if I could get you, she’d sooner have you than that old rum-puncheon Heale.  And then, you’d better stop and take pot-luck, and we’ll make a night of it.”

“I have to go round Lord Minchampstead’s estates, and will take you on my way:  but I’m afraid I shall be too dirty to have the pleasure of dining with Mrs. Trebooze coming back.”

“Mrs. Trebooze!  She must take what I like; and what’s good enough for me is good enough for her, I hope.  Come as you are—­Liberty Hall at Trebooze;” and out he swaggered.

“Does he bully her?” thought Tom, “or is he hen-pecked, and wants to hide it?  I’ll see to-night, and play my cards accordingly.”

All which Miss Heale had heard.  She had been peeping and listening at the glass-door, and her mother also; for no sooner had Trebooze entered the shop, than she had run off to tell her mother the surprising fact, Trebooze’s custom having been, for some years past, courted in vain by Heale.  So Miss Heale peeped and peeped at a man whom she regarded with delighted curiosity, because he bore the reputation of being “such a naughty wicked man!” and “so very handsome too, and so distinguished as he looks!” said the poor little fool, to whose novel-fed imagination Mr. Trebooze was an ideal Lothario.