i64 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



certainly couldn't fight Chalvey, with any chance of success ; 

 and as certainly he could fight me : or probably, to save 

 trouble, he would knock me down with a life-preserver, which 

 he would, I daresay, have about him, handy. Nowhere, as 

 Cazell has been saying, there would be an advantage in being 

 a Freemason — I mean, if Chalvey and myself were both 

 Masons. Only, by the way, on a dark night how could we 

 see each other's signs ? 



Happy Tliouglit. — Squeeze each other's hands. 



True ; but before we got to this, I should be on the ground, 

 stunned by a life-preserver. 



However, not yet being a Mason, and Chalvey being here 

 on quite another business, this discussion can be deferred. 



He, Chalvey, is a very much sunburnt man, with a sun- 

 burnt fur cap, dried up entirely in some places, and bald in 

 others. He has two jet black shining ringlets framing his 

 walnut brown face, and all round his mouth and over his 

 chin is a deep Prussian blue colour, the result of shaving a 

 powerful beard. Chalvey evidently prides himself on his 

 scrupulous neatness in shaving, and I notice that Murgle 

 keeps his hand up before his own stubbly chin, with a sense 

 of inferiority in this respect. It suddenly occurs to me that 

 now at last (it has often bothered me) I know whom Murgle 

 resembles ; he is uncommonly like Chalvey the Gipsy, who 

 might be his elder or younger brother, according as Murgle 

 chose to come out shaved or unshaved. Horse-dealing does 

 make one suspicious. And when you've been a seller your- 

 self, you become, from experience, more suspicious than 



