But I figure to myself (subject, as before, to Mr.
Edwin's correction), that there can be no coolness, no lassitude, no doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke state of mind, in a real lover.

Pray am I at all near the mark in my picture ?' As abrupt in his conclusion as in his commencement and progress, he jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when one might have supposed him in the middle of his oration.
'I should say, sir,' stammered Edwin, 'as you refer the question to me--' 'Yes,' said Mr.Grewgious, 'I refer it to you, as an authority.' 'I should say, then, sir,' Edwin went on, embarrassed, 'that the picture you have drawn is generally correct; but I submit that perhaps you may be rather hard upon the unlucky lover.' 'Likely so,' assented Mr.Grewgious, 'likely so.

I am a hard man in the grain.' 'He may not show,' said Edwin, 'all he feels; or he may not--' There he stopped so long, to find the rest of his sentence, that Mr.
Grewgious rendered his difficulty a thousand times the greater by unexpectedly striking in with: 'No to be sure; he _may_ not!' After that, they all sat silent; the silence of Mr.Bazzard being occasioned by slumber.
'His responsibility is very great, though,' said Mr.Grewgious at length, with his eyes on the fire.
Edwin nodded assent, with _his_ eyes on the fire.
'And let him be sure that he trifles with no one,' said Mr.Grewgious; 'neither with himself, nor with any other.' Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking at the fire.
'He must not make a plaything of a treasure.

Woe betide him if he does! Let him take that well to heart,' said Mr.Grewgious.
Though he said these things in short sentences, much as the supposititious charity boy just now referred to might have repeated a verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something dreamy (for so literal a man) in the way in which he now shook his right forefinger at the live coals in the grate, and again fell silent.
But not for long.

As he sat upright and stiff in his chair, he suddenly rapped his knees, like the carved image of some queer Joss or other coming out of its reverie, and said: 'We must finish this bottle, Mr.
Edwin.