'A fire in June, when I can hardly carry my coat on my back!'
'It's the last day of May now,' said Katie timidly, from behind the bed-curtains.
This, however, did not satisfy the captain, and orders were forthwith given that the fire should be taken away, the curtains stripped off, the feather beds removed, and everything reduced to pretty much the same state in which it had usually been left for Harry Norman's accommodation. So much for all the feminine care which had been thrown away upon the consideration of Uncle Bat's infirmities.
'God bless my soul!' said he, wiping his brow with a huge coloured handkerchief as big as a mainsail, 'one night in such a furnace as that would have brought on the gout.'
He had dined in town, and by the time that his chamber had been stripped of its appendages, he was nearly ready for bed. Before he did so, he was asked to take a glass of sherry.
'Ah! sherry,' said he, taking up the bottle and putting it down again. 'Sherry, ah! yes; very good wine, I am sure. You haven't a drop of rum in the house, have you?'
Mrs. Woodward declared with sorrow that she had not.
'Or Hollands?' said Uncle Bat. But the ladies of Surbiton Cottage were unsupplied also with Hollands.
'Gin?' suggested the captain, almost in despair.
Mrs. Woodward had no gin, but she could send out and get it; and the first evening of Captain Cuttwater's visit saw Mrs. Woodward's own parlour-maid standing at the bar of the Green Dragon, while two gills of spirits were being measured out for her.