“Reading mathematics, as I'm a slightly inebriated Christian!” exclaimed Archer, taking the book out of my hands; “well, if that isn't pretty cool for a man who may be going to be shot at six o'clock to-morrow morning, for anything he knows to the contrary, I'm no judge of temperature.”
“Oh! bother mathematics,” rejoined Lawless, flinging the book which Archer held out to him at a bust of Homer adorning the top of my bookshelves, which it fortunately missed—“Frank, old boy! it's all right—you're not to have a bullet through your lungs this time—shake hands, old fellow! I'm so glad about it that I've—”
“Drunk punch enough to floor any two men of ordinary capacity,” interposed Archer.
“Of course I have,” continued Lawless, “and I consider I've performed a very meritorious act in so doing;—there was the punch, all the other fellows were gone away, somebody must have drunk it, or that young reprobate Shrimp would have got hold of it; and I promised the venerable fish-fag his mother to take especial care of his what do ye call 'ums—morals, isn't it? and instil by precept, and—and—”
“Example,” suggested Archer.
“Yes, all that sort of thing,” continued Lawless, “a taste for, that is, an unbounded admiration of, the sublime and beautiful, as exemplified under the form of—”
“Rum punch, and lashings of it,” chimed in Archer; “but suppose you were to tell Fairlegh all that has passed since he came away, or let me do it for you, whichever you like best.”
“Oh! you tell him, by all means,—I like to encourage ingenuous youth; fire away, Archer, my boy!”
Thus urged, Archer informed me that upon my departure there had been a somewhat stormy discussion, in which the events of the evening were freely canvassed; and at last they came to a unanimous decision that any man was at liberty to withdraw, if a toast was proposed to which he objected, and that, if the toastmaster preferred giving it up rather than allow him to leave the party, he had a perfect right to do so. This being the case, they decided that Wilford, having been in the wrong, ought to confess he had spoken hastily, and that, if he would do so, and would add that he had meant nothing offensive either to me or Oaklands, there the matter might rest. This for a long time he positively refused to do; at length, finding he could get no one to support him, he said that, as I had owned I was wrong in attempting to prevent his expressing his opinion, he considered that, in all other respects, I had behaved in a gentlemanly way; therefore, if he had said anything which implied the contrary, he was willing to withdraw it. But, in regard to Mr. Oaklands, he considered he had interfered in a very uncalled-for manner; and he could only repeat, if that gentleman felt himself aggrieved by anything he had said, the remedy was in his own hands. As soon as he had spoken he withdrew.
The question was again debated, and at length they came to the conclusion that what Wilford had said amounted to an ample apology as far as I was concerned, which I was bound to accept; and that Oaklands, having agreed to consider the quarrel mine, could not take any further notice of it; therefore, the affair was at an end.