scension, like a popular orator--with a look of blarney
like that of O'Connell, and of assurance like that of Hume--he surveyed
the male portion of the spectators, tipped a knowing wink at the
prettiest brunettes he could select, and finally cut a sort of fling
with his well-booted legs, that brought down another appeal of rapturous
applause.

"A rank scamp!"[29] cried the upright man; and this exclamation, however
equivocal it may sound, was intended, on his part, to be highly
complimentary.

"I believe ye," returned the ruffler, stroking his chin--"one may see
that he's no half swell by the care with which he cultivates the best
gifts of nature, his whiskers. He's a rank nib."[30]

"Togged out to the ruffian, no doubt," said the palliard, who was
incomparably the shabbiest rascal in the corps. "Though a needy mizzler
mysel, I likes to see a cove vot's vel dressed. Jist twig his swell
kickseys and pipes;[31] if they ain't the thing, I'm done. Lame Harry
can't dance better nor he--no, nor Jerry Juniper neither."

"I'm dumb founded," roared the dummerar, "if he can't patter romany[32]
as vel as the best on us! He looks like a rum 'un."

"And a rum 'un he be, take my word for it," returned the whip-jack, or
sham sailor. "Look at his rigging--see how he flashes his
sticks[33]--those are the tools to rake a three-decker. He's as clever a
craft as I've seen this many a day, or I'm no judge."

The women were equally enchanted--equally eloquent in the expression of
their admiration.

"What ogles!" cried a mort.

"What pins!" said an autem mort, or married woman.

"Sharp as needles," said a dark-eyed dell, who had encountered one of
the free and frolicsome glances which our highwayman distributed so
liberally among the petticoats.

It was at this crisis Dick took off his hat. Caesar betrayed his
baldness.

"A thousand pities!" cried the men, compassionating his thinly covered
skull, and twisting their own ringlets, glossy and luxuriant, though
unconscious of Macassar. "A thousand pities that so fine a fellow should
have a sconce like a cocoanut!"

"But then his red whiskers," rejoined the women, tired of the uniformity
of thick black heads of hair; "what a warmth of coloring they impart to
his face; and then only look how beautifully bushy they make his cheeks
appear!"

La Fosseuse and the court of the Queen of Navarre were not more smitten
with the Sieur de Croix's jolly pair of whiskers.

The hawk's eye of