(Tongs indeed!) "I remember that you told me you had been _cooking_, but you cannot cook _every_ night." "Not quite," reply I, with a short smile, stretching my hands to the blaze.
"But do not you dine generally ?" "Never when I can possibly help it," I reply, with emphasis.

And no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see that I have already transgressed my mother's commands, and given vent to one of "my unlucky things." I stand silent and ashamed, reflecting that no after-tinkering will mend my unfortunate speech.
"And to-night you could not help it ?" he asks, after a slight, hardly perceptible pause.
I look up to answer him.

He is forty-seven years old.

He is a general, and a sir, and has been in every known land; has killed big and little beasts, and known big and little people, and I am nineteen and nobody, and have rarely been beyond our own park and parish, and my acquaintance is confined to half a dozen turnipy squires and their wives; and yet he is looking snubbed, and it is I that have snubbed him.

Well, I cannot help it.