ambition to deserve it. The laugh with which he hailed any appeal to his
charity was monstrous. It commenced with a leathery wheeze like the puff
of asthmatic bellows; it croaked with a grating chuckle, as if his
throat opened on rusty hinges; and then it broke out in a shrill vocal
shudder, that sounded like the shriek of a hyena.

It is an idiosyncrasy of mine to foster just such pet abominations; and
I cultivated Hardy Gripstone. My advances were not encouraged by that
overweening tenderness that indicates the possible victim of misplaced
confidence. Far from "wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck
at," it seemed to have been weaned years agone, and my milk of human
kindness fell flat as any whipped syllabub.

Felicitous as were the suggestions of his suspicious brain, it took me
fully three months to descend in his bearish estimation from a
highwayman to a ninny. There was an incredibility in my apparent lack of
motive that puzzled him. His dubious cordiality was doled out under
protest. As an exhibitor would clutch a vicious ape, he grabbed at every
show of feeling, and almost throttled the most pitiful courtesy, in his
nervous dread of its doing him some bodily harm. There was a low cunning
in his very acceptance of any little kindness. The sly way in which he
insinuated his withered face into my morning papers, and the smirk of
satisfaction with which he gloated on the triumph of having gratuitously
gleaned their entire contents, was in keeping with every other ludicrous
phase of his distorted nature. He looked upon me as a paragon of
stupidity; and I fear I considered him a piece of personal property, and
felt as much pride in the possession as did Barnum in his Aztec
children.

I do not think the acquaintance tended in any way to exaggerate my ideas