"I thank you, Mr.—, Mr.—, what did you say your name was?—I beg you a thousand pardons."
"No offaunce in the least, sir; no ceremony with me—this is perticler good madeira!"
"May I ask how I can serve you?" said Mr. Beaufort, struggling between the sense of annoyance and the fear to be uncivil. "And pray, had I the honour of your vote in the last election!"
"No, sir, no! It's mauny years since I have been in your part of the world, though I was born there."
"Then I don't exactly see—" began Mr. Beaufort, and stopped with dignity.
"Why I call on you," put in the stranger, tapping his boots with his cane; and then recognising the rents, he thrust both feet under the table.
"I don't say that; but at this hour I am seldom at leisure—not but what I am always at the service of a constituent, that is, a voter! Mr.—, I beg your pardon, I did not catch your name."
"Sir," said the stranger, helping himself to a third glass of wine; "here's a health to your young folk! And now to business." Here the visitor, drawing his chair nearer to his host, assuming a more grave aspect, and dropping something of his stilted pronunciation, continued, "You had a brother?"
"Well, sir," said Mr. Beaufort, with a very changed countenance.
"And that brother had a wife!"