But before I could say any more, the jockey, having laid down his pipe, rose, and having taken off his coat, advanced towards me.
THE jockey, having taken off his coat and advanced towards me, as I have stated in the preceding chapter, exclaimed, in an angry tone: “This is the third time you have interrupted me in my tale, Mr. Rye; I passed over the two first times with a simple warning, but you will now please to get up and give me the satisfaction of a man”.
“I am really sorry,” said I, “if I have given you offence, but you were talking of our English habit of bestowing nicknames, and I could not refrain from giving a few examples tending to prove what a very ancient habit it is.”
“But you interrupted me,” said the jockey, “and put me out of my tale, which you had no right to do; and as for your examples, how do you know that I wasn’t going to give some as old or older than yourn? Now, stand up, and I’ll make an example of you.”
“Well,” said I, “I confess it was wrong in me to interrupt you, and I ask your pardon.”
“That won’t do,” said the jockey, “asking pardon won’t do.”
“Oh,” said I, getting up, “if asking pardon does not satisfy you, you are a different man from what I considered you.”
But here the Hungarian, also getting up, interposed his tall form and pipe between us, saying in English, scarcely intelligible, “Let there be no dispute! As for myself, I am very much obliged to the young man of Horncastle for his interruption, though he has told me that one of his dirty townsmen called me ‘Longstockings’. By Isten! there is more learning in what he has just said than in all the _verdammt_ English histories of Thor and Tzernebock I ever read.”
“I care nothing for his learning,” said the jockey. “I consider myself as good a man as he, for all his learning; so stand out of the way, Mr. Sixfoot-eleven or—”
“I shall do no such thing,” said the Hungarian. “I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself. You ask a young man to drink champagne with you, you make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good sense; he ask your pardon, yet you not—”
“Well,” said the jockey, “I am satisfied. I am rather a short-tempered person, but I bear no malice. He is, as you say, drinking my wine, and has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to such high liquor; but one doesn’t like to be put out of one’s tale, more especially when one was about to moralise, do you see, oneself, and to show off what little learning one has. However, I bears no malice. Here is a hand to each of you; we’ll take another glass each, and think no more about it.”