Getting no response to his repeated sallies, he added:
"What's up! out with it! If that pile of papers is in a tangle, say the
word, and I'll bring my mighty brain to bear on them, and set them in order
for you in no time! No? Are the men going out on a strike, then? or is your
great-grandma down with the measles? Then, for Heaven's sake, why such a
doleful expression? It is enough to give one the blues to look at you!" and
he re-crossed his legs and looked searchingly at his friend.
"That's all your nonsense, Fenerty! I'm all right! What's the news?" and
Traverse leaned back in his chair as if to resign himself to the
inevitable.
"News! he asks for news, when I have come here expecting to find him
boiling over with anxiety to impart news to someone!" and Fenerty rolled up
his eyes in astonishment. "However, now that I have looked at you, and seen
the settled melancholy of those features, I am obliged to own that you do
not look like a man to be congratulated."
"Why should I be congratulated, and for what? What joke are you struggling
to get rid of, Fenerty?"
"'Pon honor, Traverse, I believe you are right! The congratulations are due
in some other quarter, yet who is he?"
"I am as much in the dark as yourself, Fenerty.
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