“An axiom,” said I, “not to be disputed; but now that we are safe, and have time to think about it, are you not slightly of opinion that we behaved somewhat scurvily to our better half, in leaving it so quietly in the hands of the Philistines?”
“By no means,” answered Dartmore. “In a party, whose members make no pretensions to sobriety, it would be too hard to expect that persons who are scarcely capable of taking care of themselves, should take care of other people. No; we have, in all these exploits, only the one maxim of self-preservation.”
“Allow me,” said Tringle, seizing me by the coat, “to explain it to you on scientific principles. You will find, in hydrostatics, that the attraction of cohesion is far less powerful in fluids than in solids; viz. that persons who have been converting their ‘solid flesh’ into wine skins, cannot stick so close to one another as when they are sober.”
“Bravo, Tringle!” cried Dartmore; “and now, Pelham, I hope your delicate scruples are, after so luminous an eclaircissement, set at rest for ever.”
“You have convinced me,” said I; “let us leave the unfortunates to their fate, and Sir Richard. What is now to be done?”
“Why, in the first place,” answered Dartmore, “let us reconnoitre. Does any one know this spot?”
“Not I,” said both of us. We inquired of an old fellow, who was tottering home under the same Bacchanalian auspices as ourselves, and found we were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
“Which shall we do?” asked I, “stroll home; or parade the streets, visit the Cider-Cellar, and the Finish, and kiss the first lass we meet in the morning bringing her charms and carrots to Covent Garden Market?”
“The latter,” cried Dartmore and Tringle, “without doubt.”
“Come, then,” said I, “let us investigate Holborn, and dip into St. Giles’s, and then find our way into some more known corner of the globe.”