"
"Why do you oblige me to ask for them? Can't you bring them as I have
told you? It makes me so late with my work." And, having delivered
himself of these testy remarks, he threw himself into an arm-chair
and proceeded to devour the morning's news.
"Nothing fresh from the East?" As he now talked to himself, this
smooth-shaven, typical Englishman spoke, strange to say, in French.
"Have Messieurs the correspondents no news? No letter in the _Post_?
None in the _Morning Chronicle_? How disappointing! Ha! what's this?
Two columns in the _Times_. How admirably that excellent paper is
served! Let's see what it says."
He hastily ran his eye down the columns, muttering to himself: "Ha!
mostly strong language--finding fault. How kind of you to be
dissatisfied with the administration, and to tell us why. The siege
practically suspended, eh? Fuses won't fit the shells--so much the
better, then the mortars can't fire.
"But that's no news: my friends and good masters will have found that
out for themselves. Anything else? 'Our new battery, which is only
seven hundred yards from the enemy's guns, is nearly completed.'
Which battery does he mean? Has he referred to it before?"
And Mr. Hobson, as we shall still call him, got up from his seat and
took a volume down from the shelf.
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