The naval man gave a resounding nautical smack to his thigh.
“That is what ’tis to be a sailor,” he cried. “I have had no chance of seeing Mr. Garrick at his best. I should dearly like to hear him take off Mr. Boswell when three sheets in the wind. Why was he not with us yesterday?”
“Mr. Garrick himself has had a drinking bout on. He has been at the Wells for the past fortnight,” said his father.
“Ecce signum!” came a doleful voice from the door, and a little man slowly put round the jamb a face bearing such an expression of piteous nausea as caused everyone in the room—not even excepting Mrs. Burney—to roar with laughter—uncontrollable laughter.
Then the expression on the little man’s face changed to one of surprised indignation. He crept into the room and looked at every person therein with a different expression on his face for each—a variation of his original expression of disgust and disappointment mingled with doleful reproof. It seemed as if it was not a single person who had entered the room, but half a dozen persons—a whole doleful and disappointed family coming upon an unsympathetic crew convulsed with hilarity.
And then he shook his head sadly.
“And these are the people who have just heard that I have been taking the nauseous waters of Tunbridge Wells for a whole fortnight,” and there was a break in his voice. “Oh, Friendship, are thou but a name? Oh, Sympathy, art thou but a mask? Is the world of sentiment nothing more than a world of shadows? Have all the sweet springs of compassion dried up, leaving us nothing but the cataracts of chalybeate to nauseate the palate?”
He looked round once more, and putting the tips of his fingers together, glanced sadly up to the ceiling, then sighed and turned as if to leave the room.
“Nay, sir,” cried Dr. Burney, “I do not believe that the chalybeate cataracts still flow: ’tis my firm belief, from the expression of your face, that you have swallowed the whole spring—the Wells of Tunbridge must have been dried up by you before you left—your face betrays you. I vow that so chalybeate an expression could not be attained by lesser means.”