And all the while the footsteps were coming up.
There was a loud knock on the door.
“Come in!” call’d Sir Deakin.
At this, Jacques, who stood ready for battle by the entrance, wheeled round, shot a look at his master, and dropping his point, made a sign to me to do the same. The door was thrust rudely open, and Captain Settle, his hat cock’d over one eye, and sham drunkenness in his gait, lurched into the room, with the whole villainous crew behind him, huddled on the threshold. Jacques and I stepp’d quietly back, so as to cover the girl.
[Illustration: The door was thrust rudely open.—Page 88.]
“Would you mind waiting a moment?” inquir’d Sir Deakin, without looking up, but rubbing the nutmeg calmly up and down the grater: “a fraction too much, and the whole punch will be spoil’d.”
It took the Captain aback, and he came to a stand, eyeing us, who look’d back at him without saying a word. And this discomposed him still further.
There was a minute during which the two parties could hear each other’s breathing. Sir Deakin set down the nutmeg, wiped his thin white fingers on a napkin, and address’d the Captain sweetly—
“Before asking your business, sir, I would beg you and your company to taste this liquor, which, in the court of France”—the old gentleman took a sip from the mixing ladle—“has had the extreme honor to be pronounced divine.” He smack’d his lips, and rising to his feet, let his right hand rest on the silver foot of the lamp as he bowed to the Captain.
Captain Settle’s bravado was plainly oozing away before this polite audacity: and seeing Sir Deakin taste the punch, he pull’d off his cap in a shamefaced manner and sat down by the table with a word of thanks.