"
"Tut, tut!" cried the other. "Your tongue goes like the clapper
of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this
herring. Understand first, however, that there are certain
conditions attached to it."
"I had hoped," said Alleyne, falling into the humor of the twain,
"that a tranchoir of bread and a draught of milk might be
attached to it."
"Hark to him, hark to him!" cried the little fat man. "It is
even thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch
or the sweating sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I
tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me
without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man
never stepped, and yet within the week you have said three things
which might pass, and one thing the day we left Fordingbridge
which I should not have been ashamed of myself."
"Enough, rattle-pate, enough!" said the other. "The milk you
shall have and the bread also, friend, together with the herring,
but you must hold the scales between us."
"If he hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother,"
cried the fat man.
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