"If you want work, there's work to be had here, as I said," responded the
Young Doctor. "You are a man of education--"
"How do you know that?" asked Jean Jacques.
"I hear you speak," answered the other, and then Jean Jacques drew
himself up and threw back his head. He had ever loved appreciation, not
to say flattery, and he had had very little of it lately.
"I was at Laval," he remarked with a flash of pride. "No degree, but a
year there, and travel abroad--the Grand Tour, and in good style, with
plenty to do it with. Oh, certainly, no thought for sous, hardly for
francs! It was gold louis abroad and silver dollars at home--that was the
standard."
"The dollars are much scarcer now, eh?" asked the Young Doctor
quizzically.
"I should think I had just enough to pay you," said the other, bridling
up suddenly; for it seemed to him the Young Doctor had become ironical
and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were
times when it was not easy to endure it.
The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature,
and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant,
because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the
little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During
the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far
from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper
laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the
extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect
order of his scantily-furnished knapsack.
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