"Never, sir; and I don't think, provided I get safe away this time, that I'm ever likely to come again."
"You're complimentary; but now you are here, sit down and have a drink. Spirits there in that stand, soda-water here in the window-seat, ice in that refrigerator by the door. Or stay, let me make you the new Yankee drink that has just come up--a cobbler. There are plenty of straws somewhere about."
"I should think so," said Billy, in a stage-whisper to Paul. "He gets 'em out of the patients' heads. Lunatics always stick straws in their heads, vide the drama passim. I say, Wainwright, while you're mixing the grog, may I run out and have a look at the night-watch?"
"The what?" asked George, raising his head.
"The night-watch, you know;" and Mr. Dunlop sat down at the piano, squared his elbows, contorted his face, and with much ludicrous exaggeration burst forth:
"Hush-sh-sh-sh! 'tis the NIGHT-WATCH!! he gy-ards my lonely cell!
"Now don't you say that he doesn't, you know, because I've Mr. Henry Russell's authority that he does. So produce your night-watch!"
"Don't make such a row, Billy!" cried Paul; "there's no night-watch, or anything else of the sort."
"What! do you mean to say that I did not see her dancing in the hall? that I am not cold, bitter cold? that his glimmering lamp no more I see? and that no, no, by hav-vens, I am not ma-a-ad?" With these words, uttered in the wildest tones, Mr. Dunlop cast himself at full length on the sofa, whence arising immediately with a placid countenance, he said: "Gentlemen, if you wish thus to uproot and destroy the tenderest associations of childhood, I shall be happy, when I have finished my drink, to wish you a good-evening, and return home."
"I can't think what the deuce you came for," said Paul, with a smile. "He looked in at the club where I was dining, hoping to meet you, and where I heard you had been and gone, and asked me whether I wasn't going to evening service. When I told him 'yes,' he said he would come with me; and all the way along he has done nothing but growl at the pace I was walking, and the length of the way."