induce an equal degree of communicativeness on the other side.

"Oh! yes, the landlord told me of your disasters."

"After all, I believe the very worst of them was coming to this place in
such a season."

"It is certainly seeing it en papillate" said Jekyl, smiling; "and you,
perhaps, are not an admirer of beauty unadorned."

"Say, rather, of Nature at her ugliest; for whatever it may be in
summer, with foliage, and clear streams, flowers, smart folk airing and
driving about, equipage, music, movement, and merry voices, now it is
really too dismal. Pray, how do you get through the day?"

Jekyl smiled one of his quiet, equivocal smiles, and slightly raised his
shoulders without speaking.

"Do you shoot?"

"No," said he.

"But why do I ask? there's nothing to shoot. You ride, then?"

"No."

"Cigars will do a great deal; but, confound it, there must be a large
share of the day very heavy on your hands, even with a reasonable
allowance for reading and writing."

"Seldom do either!" said Jekyl, with his usual imperturbed manner.

"You have n't surely got up a flirtation with some 'Frdulein with
yellow hair '?"

"I cannot lay claim to such good fortune. I really do nothing. I have
not even the usual English resource of a terrier to jump over my stick,
nor was I early enough initiated into the mystery of brandy-and-water
in fact, a less occupied individual cannot well be imagined; but somehow
you'll smile if I say I am not bored."

"It would be very ungenerous, then, to conceal your secret," cried
Onslow; "for assuredly the art of killing time here, without killing
one's self, is worth knowing."

"The misfortune is, I cannot communicate it; that is, even giving me
credit for possessing one, my skill is like that of some great medical
practitioner, who has learnt to look on disease with such practised eyes
that the appropriate remedy rises as it were instinctively to his mind,
he knows not how or why, and who dies, without being able to transmit
the knowledge to a successor. I have, somewhat in the same way, become
an accomplished idler; and with such success that the dreariest day of
rain that ever darkened the dirty windows of a village inn, the most
scorching dog-day that ever emptied the streets of an Italian city, and
sent all the inhabitants to their siesta, never hipped me. I have spent
a month with perfect satisfaction in quarantine, and bobbed for three
weeks in a calm at sea, with no other inconv