"Parbleu!"

"She had thought of a way to reconcile my wishes with this terrible
etiquette that reigns here."

"She thinks to more purpose than you do; that is clear."

"Nothing is left now but to ask her pardon, and to consent; I am off."

"No, you are not," and Jacintha laid a grasp of iron on him. "Will you
be quiet?--is not one blunder a day enough? If you go near her now, she
will affront you, and order the doctor not to speak to you."

"O Jacintha! your sex then are fiends of malice?"

"While it lasts. Luckily with us nothing lasts very long. Now you don't
go near her till you have taken advantage of her hint, and made the
doctor's acquaintance; that is easy done. He walks two hours on the east
road every day, with his feet in the puddles and his head in the clouds.
Them's HIS two tastes."

"But how am I to get him out of the clouds and the puddles?" inquired
Riviere half peevishly.

"How?" asked Jacintha, with a dash of that contempt uneducated persons
generally have for any one who does not know some little thing they
happen to know themselves. "How? Why, with the nearest blackbeetle, to
be sure."