and usually liked to repeat them before he had quite done with them,
"that's it, you may be sure. Perhaps he isn't."

"What do you mean, Master Clutterbuck?" asked Ursula Quekett, for
she knew the old man liked to explain his wise saws, and as she
wanted to marry his son, she indulged him whenever she could.
"What do you mean? He isn't what?"

"He isn't. That's all," explained Clutterbuck with vague solemnity.

Then seeing that he had gained the attention of the little party round
him, he condescended to come to more logical phraseology.

"I mean, that perhaps we must not ask, 'who IS this mysterious
Scarlet Pimpernel?' but 'who WAS that poor and unfortunate
gentleman?'"

"Then you think ... " suggested Mistress Polly, who felt
unaccountably low-spirited at this oratorical pronouncement.

"I have it for a fact," said Mr. Clutterbuck solemnly, "that he whom
they call the Scarlet Pimpernel no longer exists now: that he was
collared by the Frenchies, as far back as last fall, and in the language
of the poets, has never been heard of no more."

Mr. Clutterbuck was very fond of quoting from the works of certain
writers whose names he never mentioned, but who went by the
poetical generality of "the poets." Whenever he made use of phrases
which he was supposed to derive from these great and unnamed
authors, he solemnly and mechanically raised his hat, as a tribute of