'How very English it is,--a little yellow river,--and you call it the sea! Ah;--you never were at Newport!'
'But I've been at San Francisco.'
'Yes; you've been at San Francisco, and heard the seals howling. Well; that's better than Southend.'
'I suppose we do have the sea here in England. It's generally supposed we're an island.'
'Of course;--but things are so small. If you choose to go to the west of Ireland, I suppose you'd find the Atlantic. But nobody ever does go there for fear of being murdered.' Paul thought of the gentleman in Oregon, but said nothing;--thought, perhaps, of his own condition, and remembered that a man might be murdered without going either to Oregon or the west of Ireland. 'But we went to Southend, I, and Mrs Pipkin and the baby, and upon my word I enjoyed it. She was so afraid that the baby would annoy me, and I thought the baby was so much the best of it. And then we ate shrimps, and she was so humble. You must acknowledge that with us nobody would be so humble. Of course I paid. She has got all her children, and nothing but what she can make out of these lodgings. People are just as poor with us;--and other people who happen to be a little better off, pay for them. But nobody is humble to another, as you are here. Of course we like to have money as well as you do, but it doesn't make so much difference.'
'He who wants to receive, all the world over, will make himself as agreeable as he can to him who can give.'
'But Mrs Pipkin was so humble. However, we got back all right yesterday evening, and then I found that you had been here,--at last.'
'You knew that I had to go to Liverpool.'
'I'm not going to scold. Did you get your business done at Liverpool?'
'Yes;--one generally gets something done, but never anything very satisfactorily. Of course it's about this railway.'
'I should have thought that that was satisfactory. Everybody talks of it as being the greatest thing ever invented. I wish I was a man that I might be concerned with a really great thing like that. I hate little peddling things. I should like to manage the greatest bank in the world, or to be Captain of the biggest fleet, or to make the largest railway. It would be better even than being President of a Republic, because one would have more of one's own way. What is it that you do in it, Paul?'