The memory of his injuries, forgotten for the brief span of ecstasy, returned in full force. His lip drooped.
“Aye, ma’am, a little, a little. But I am sadly weak.”
He pushed his glass tentatively forward, but she ignored the hint.
“I thought you was a-dying by inches before my eyes,” she announced deliberately.
The red face opposite to her grew mottled grey and purple. Mr. Giles began to whimper:
“So I was, ma’am. So I be!”
Margery sat down and, clasping the bottle with both her determined hands, leaned her head on one side of it.
“Another month of small-ale,” she said, “would bring you to your grave, Mister Giles. Aye, you may groan. How many bottles be left of this old port? Seventy ye said. And there be as good besides.”
“The East India sherry,” said he, the light of his one remaining interest flickering up again in the aged sockets. “Oh, it’s a beauty, that wine is! As dry, ma’am, and as mellow!” He smacked his tongue. “And there’s the Madeiry, got at the Dook of Sussex’s sale. ‘Royal wine,’ says Sir Everard to me. And Royal wine it is! But you know the taste of it yourself. Then there are the Burgundy bins. Women folk,” said Mr. Giles, “have that inferiority, they can’t appreciate red wine. But there’s Burgundy down in my cellars that I’d rather go to bed on a bottle of as even of the Comet port.”
Margery broke in with a short laugh.