“Certainly not, Jasper. Indeed, after such a sermon as we have been hearing, I should be very shocked if you held such an opinion.”
“However, brother, don’t be sure I do not, however shocking such an opinion may be to you.”
“What an incomprehensible people you are, Jasper.”
“We are rather so, brother; indeed, we have posed wiser heads than yours before now.”
“You seem to care for so little, and yet you rove about a distinct race.”
“They have certainly very singular names, Jasper.”
“Names! Lavengro! However, brother, if you had been as fond of things as of names, you would never have been a pal of ours.”
“They have tongues of their own, Jasper.”
“Did you ever feel their teeth and nails, brother?”
“Never, Jasper, save Mrs. Herne’s. I have always been very civil to them, so—”
“They let you alone. I say, brother, some part of the secret is in them.”
“Not quite so well as we can them. However, we get on very well together, except Mikailia and her husband; but Mikailia is a cripple, and is married to the beauty of the world, so she may be expected to be jealous—though he would not part with her for a duchess, no more than I would part with my rawnie, nor any other chal with his.”
“Ay, but would not the chi part with the chal for a duke, Jasper?”
“My Pakomovna gave up the duke for me, brother?”
“But she occasionally talks of him, Jasper.”
“Yes, brother, but Pakomovna was born on a common not far from the sign of the gammon.”
“Yes, brother; but gammon likewise means—”
“I know it does, Jasper; it means fun, ridicule, jest; it is an ancient Norse word, and is found in the Edda.”
“Lor’, brother! how learned in lils you are!”
“Many words of Norse are to be found in our vulgar sayings, Jasper; for example—in that particularly vulgar saying of ours, ‘Your mother is up,’ there’s a noble Norse word; mother, there, meaning not the female who bore us, but rage and choler, as I discovered by reading the Sagas, Jasper.”
“Lor’, brother! how book-learned you be.”
“Indifferently so, Jasper. Then you think you might trust your wife with the duke?”
“I think I could, brother, or even with yourself.”
“Myself, Jasper! Oh, I never troubled my head about your wife; but I suppose there have been love affairs between gorgios and Romany chies. Why, novels are stuffed with such matters; and then even one of your own songs say so—the song which Ursula was singing the other afternoon.”