cetera, till I pulled him up short by asking him if he would like me to lend him a penny piece?
It would be hard to say which of us was the more irritated and hurt by this little passage at arms, but we kept up the conversation for a while longer, talking in a stiff unnatural way of the weather and the crops. I could see that he was sorry for his meanness; the poor old boy is good-hearted at bottom and genuinely attached to me, and I knew that he would have been delighted to lend me money, if he had been certain that he would lose nothing by it, and what is more he would have yielded if I had pressed the point; but he was not to blame, after all; he had centuries of miserly blood in his veins, and though there may be small householders in his position who are also open-handed, — I say there is a legend that such people do exist, — when you lay a finger on the purse of a man like that, his first instinct is to say "No!"
At that very moment Paillard would have loved to reconsider his refusal, but here my pride came in, and I would make no further advances; my friend ought to have been glad to help me out of my difficulties, and if he thought otherwise, so much the worse for him!
There we sat sulky and unhappy; he asked if I would not stay to lunch, but I refused somewhat
