"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly folded shirt.

"Well, friend," said the Abbot, peevishly, "thou art ill to please with thy woodcraft. I pray thee be more conformable in this matter of my ransom. At a word---since I must needs, for once, hold a candle to the devil---what ransom am I to pay for walking on Watling-street, without having fifty men at my back?"

Miss Knag here relapsed into softness, and the young ladies renewing their attentions, murmured that she ought to be superior to such things, and that for their part they despised them, and considered them beneath their notice; in witness whereof, they called out, more emphatically than before, that it was a shame, and that they felt so angry, they did, they hardly knew what to do with themselves.