The babble of talk, hushed at the entrance of the newcomer, began
to rise again when he took up one of the journals, and appeared
disposed for reading rather than conversation. Tom, unable to take
his eyes off the elegant figure, still continued to ask questions
respecting him, but was more puzzled than enlightened by the nature
of the replies.
"There had been other Clauds before him," one of the men remarked.
Another added that it was easy to be rich when the king was made to
pay toll.
Slippery Seal wished, with a laugh and an oath, that he were half
as slippery as the great Lord Claud; and Bully Bullen remarked that
if he could but get such a reputation for duelling, he would play
the bully to better purpose than he did now.
This band of four were getting noisy and quarrelsome. They had been
drinking steadily ever since they came in, and their cups of coffee
had been tinctured by something much stronger. They were getting up
their energies for their nightly prowls about the city, and thought
it no bad start to bait young Tom first. Of course he had betrayed
his ignorance and rusticity in a hundred little ways. Although he
began to understand a little of what passed around him in the
interlarded speech of the day, he could not frame his tongue to any
adequate imitation of it yet.
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