“As it is an inn, perhaps they 'd let us have a bit of dinner. What would you say to being my guest there tomorrow? Would that suit you?”
“It would suit me well enough!” was the strongly marked reply.
“Well, we 'll do it this wise. You 'll send one of your people over to order dinner for two at—shall we say five o'clock?—yes, five—to-morrow. That will give us a longer evening, and I 'll call here for you about four. Is that agreed?”
“Yes, that might do,” was M'Cormick's half-reluctant assent, for, in reality, there were details in the matter that he scarcely fancied. First of all, he had never hitherto crossed that threshold except as an invited guest, and he had his misgivings about the prudence of appearing in any other character, and secondly, there was a responsibility in ordering the dinner, which he liked just as little, and, as he muttered to himself, “Maybe I 'll have to order the bill too!”
Some unlucky experiences of casualties of this sort had, perhaps, shadowed his early life; for so it was, that long after Stapylton had taken his leave and gone off, the Major stood there ruminating over this unpleasant contingency, and ingeniously imagining all the pleas he could put in, should his apprehension prove correct, against his own indebtedness.
“Tell Miss Dinah,” said he to his messenger,—“tell her 't is an officer by the name of Captain Staples, or something like that, that 's up at Cobham, that wants a dinner for two to-morrow at five o'clock; and mind that you don't say who the other is, for it's nothing to her. And if she asks you what sort of a dinner, say the best in the house, for the Captain—mind you say the Captain—is to pay for it, and the other man only dines with him. There, now, you have your orders, and take care that you follow them!”
There was a shrewd twinkle in the messenger's eye as he listened, which, if not exactly complimentary, guaranteed how thoroughly he comprehended the instructions that were given to him; and the Major saw him set forth on his mission, well assured that he could trust his envoy.
In that nothing-for-nothing world Major M'Cormick had so long lived in, and to whose practice and ways he had adapted all his thoughts, there was something puzzling in the fact of a dashing Captain of Hussars of “the Prince's Own,” seeking him out, to form his acquaintance and invite him to dinner. Now, though the selfishness of an unimaginative man is the most complete of all, it yet exposes him to fewer delusions than the same quality when found allied with a hopeful or fanciful temperament. M'Cormick had no “distractions” from such sources. He thought very ill of the world at large; he expected extremely little from its generosity, and he resolved to be “quits” with it. To his often put question, “What brought him here?—what did he come for?” he could find no satisfactory reply. He scouted the notion of “love of scenery, solitude, and so forth,” and as fully he ridiculed to himself the idea of a stranger caring to hear the gossip and small-talk of a mere country neighborhood. “I have it!” cried he at last, as a bright thought darted through his brain,—“I have it at last! He wants to pump me about the 'expedition.' It's for that he's come. He affected surprise, to be sure, when I said I was a Walcheren man, and pretended to be amazed, besides; but that was all make-believe. He knew well enough who and what I was before he came. And he was so cunning, leading the conversation away in another direction, getting me to talk of old Peter and his son George. Wasn't it deep?—was n't it sly? Well, maybe we are not so innocent as we look, ourselves; maybe we have a trick in our sleeves too! 'With a good dinner and a bottle of port wine,' says he, 'I 'll have the whole story, and be able to write it with the signature “One who was there.”' But you 're mistaken this time, Captain; the sorrow bit of Walcheren you 'll hear out of my mouth to-morrow, be as pleasant and congenial as you like. I 'll give you the Barringtons, father and son,—ay, and old Dinah, too, if you fancy her,—but not a syllable about the expedition. It's the Scheldt you want, but you 'll have to 'take it out' in the Ganges.” And his uncouth joke so tickled him that he laughed till his eyes ran over; and in the thought that he was going to obtain a dinner under false pretences, he felt something as nearly like happiness as he had tasted for many a long day before.