Sir Nicolas has engagements in London that month."
"Oh! then you are going back."
"Why, what would we be doing all the winter here in Paris?"
He seemed to think a while over this, taking a drink of the hock and rolling his bleary eyes as though he was looking for some one in the garden. Presently he said;
"Do you like the situation you're in?"
"Oh!" said I, "it's much the same as other situations. Here to-day and gone to-morrow."
"Then you travel a good deal?"
"That's so—but travel or no travel, it's all the same to me."
"Your master seems a pleasant sort of gentleman?"
"I should call him that."
"He's a baronet or something, isn't he?"
"Exactly; he's Sir Nicolas Steele of Castle Rath, County Kerry."
"A generous man, I should say."
I looked at him straight, for I'd read him up by this time.
"It's a cold morning for talking in the open air, sir," says I, and with that I turned on my heel and left him.
Now, though I had taken it coolly enough, a duller head than mine could have seen through the man's talk.
