He's a countryman of yours, and I believe--I believe it's--about--settled!" He pronounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly! Not more slowly than the construction of my own response, which I heard myself making: "This countryman of mine--who is he ?" "One of your kind of Kentucky Colonels," Poor Jr.

laughed mournfully.
At first I did not understand; then it came to me that he had sometimes previously spoken in that idiom of the nobles, and that it had been his custom to address one of his Parisian followers, a vicomte, as "Colonel." "What is his name ?" "I can't pronounce it, and I don't know how to spell it," he answered.
"And that doesn't bring me to the verge of the grave! I can bear to forget it, at least until we get to Naples!" He turned and went to the door, saying, cheerfully: "Well, old horse-thief" (such had come to be his name for me sometimes, and it was pleasant to hear), "we must be dressing.

They're at this hotel, and we dine with them to-night.".