Influenced by these considerations, he espoused
the young gentleman's quarrel with great warmth, protesting that he had
done quite right, and that he respected him for it; which John Browdie
(albeit not quite clear as to the merits) immediately protested too,
with not inferior vehemence.
'Let him take care, that's all,' said the defeated party, who was being
rubbed down by a waiter, after his recent fall on the dusty boards. 'He
don't knock me about for nothing, I can tell him that. A pretty state of
things, if a man isn't to admire a handsome girl without being beat to
pieces for it!'
This reflection appeared to have great weight with the young lady in
the bar, who (adjusting her cap as she spoke, and glancing at a mirror)
declared that it would be a very pretty state of things indeed; and that
if people were to be punished for actions so innocent and natural as
that, there would be more people to be knocked down than there would
be people to knock them down, and that she wondered what the gentleman
meant by it, that she did.
'My dear girl,' said the young gentleman in a low voice, advancing
towards the sash window.
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