“Pray give me leave, my dear—owls and honey, whenever the king should come a rat-catching into this part of the country.”
“Rat-catching!” ejaculated the squire, pausing abruptly in the mastication of a drumstick.
“To be sure, my dear sir; don't you remember the rats came under the forest laws—a minor species of venison? 'Rats and mice, and such small deer,' eh?—Shakespeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats ('The nasty fellows!' shuddered Miss Julia, in a parenthesis); and owls, you know, are capital mousers——”
“I've seen a howl,” said Mr. Peters; “there's one in the Sohological Gardens—a little hook-nosed chap in a wig—only its feathers and——”
Poor P. was destined never to finish a speech.
“Do be quiet!” cried the authoritative voice; and the would-be naturalist shrank into his shell, like a snail in the “Sohological Gardens.”
“You should read Blount's Jocular Tenures, Mr. Ingoldsby,” pursued Simpkinson. “A learned man was Blount! Why, sir, His Royal Highness the Duke of York once paid a silver horse-shoe to Lord Ferrers——”
“I've heard of him,” broke in the incorrigible Peters; “he was hanged at the Old Bailey in a silk rope for shooting Dr. Johnson.”
The antiquary vouchsafed no notice of the interruption; but, taking a pinch of snuff, continued his harangue.
“A silver horse-shoe, sir, which is due from every scion of royalty who rides across one of his manors; and if you look into the penny county histories, now publishing by an eminent friend of mine, you will find that Langhale in Co. Norf. was held by one Baldwin per saltum, sufflatum, et pettum; that is, he was to come every Christmas into Westminster Hall, there to take a leap, cry hem! and——”