'A cheerful glass, then,' said Sir Sedley, 'you think horridly intolerable?'
'A cheerful glass, sir! do you take me for a milk-sop? do you think I don't know what it is to be a man? a cheerful glass, sir, is the first pleasure in life; the most convivial, the most exhilarating, the most friendly joy of a true honest soul! what were existence without it? I should choose to be off in half an hour; which I should only make so long, not to shock my friends.'
'Well, the glass is not what I patronise,' said Sir Theophilus; 'it hips me so consumedly the next day; no, I can't patronise the glass.'
'Not patronise wine?' cried Lord Newford; 'O hang it! O curse it! that's too bad, Offy! but hunting! what dost think of that, little Offy?'
'Too obstreperous! It rouses one at such aukward hours; no, I can't patronise hunting.'
'Hunting!' cried Macdersey; 'O, it leaves everything behind it; 'tis the thing upon the earth for which I have the truest taste. I know nothing else that is not a bauble to it. A man is no more, in my estimation, than a child, or a woman, that don't enjoy it.'
'Cards, then,' said Sir Sedley, 'you reprobate?'
'And dice?'—cried Lord Newford—
'And betting?'—cried Sir Theophilus.
'Why what do you take me for, gentlemen?' replied Macdersey, hotly; 'Do you think I have no soul? no fire? no feeling? Do you suppose me a stone? a block? a lump of lead? I scorn such suspicions; I don't hold them worth answering. I am none of that torpid, morbid, drowsy tribe. I hold nobody to have an idea of life that has not rattled in his own hand the dear little box of promise. What ecstasy not to know if, in two seconds, one mayn't be worth ten thousand pounds! or else without a farthing! how it puts one on the rack! There's nothing to compare with it. I would not give up that moment to be sovereign of the East Indies! no, not if the West were to be put into the bargain.'