Everybody stood up and drank. José, knowing that some good work was a-doing, saluted. But when the others sat down again, Mr. Crowberry remained standing.
"I haven't done yet," he said. "There's another toast. Ladies and gentlemen, I take leave to propose the health of Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha. May God forgive him for having such a name. Ladies and gentlemen, he's a jolly good fellow. Personally, I don't like his claret; but, to be candid, I don't like anybody's. I've tasted worse stuff from Bordeaux at half a guinea a bottle."
Young Crowberry applauded noisily. Mrs. Baxter, who had dined well, blinked at the speaker like a sleepy pussy-cat. Sir Percival listened with almost excessive politeness. He had emerged from his abstraction, and was ashamed of his earlier brusqueness. Isabel's gaze was riveted on her painted plate.
"When I reflect," continued Mr. Crowberry, "that Senhor da Rocha has accomplished all this on a few guineas of capital and almost single-handed, I am more than ever proud to be his friend. The weeks I passed with him in England were the pleasantest of my life. Sir Percy ... Ladies ... I congratulate you on your neighbor. He has given us a dinner fit for kings. I say once more, he's a jolly good fellow, and I empty my glass to his lifelong health and happiness."
Young Crowberry, using both hands, rattled the blades of two knives against the rims of two plates, at the same time stamping on the stone floor and yapping out, "Hear, hear!" in a voice like a terrier's bark. The toast was drunk.
Antonio rose to respond. But it was nearly half a minute before he opened his mouth. Mr. Crowberry's unexpected compliment gave him an opportunity for which he was unprepared, and English was not his native tongue. At last he said:
"Mr. Crowberry, ladies and gentlemen. I cannot accept your compliments, for I do not deserve them; but I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes. I thank you, also, for the honor you have done me in coming to this little house. You, sir, have kindly spoken of our picnic as a dinner; but I am under no delusions, and I thank you, most of all, for your leniency towards our roughness and shortcomings."
Mrs. Baxter graciously inclined her head, as if to bestow a plenary indulgence where it was urgently needed; but the others cried, "No! Not at all!"
"And now," Antonio went on, "I have a toast on my own account, though I'm the only one to drink it. I propose the health of my guests. Mr. Crowberry's was the only face I knew when I landed in your beautiful England, and his was the last face I saw when I sailed away. Without his generosity I might not be on this farm to-day. It does me good to see him again. He is—I hope I'm pronouncing the word right—he's a jolligoodfellow."
"And so say I," sang out young Crowberry. "He's a block of the young chip."