“And so you should, sir,” cried Captain Jackson as the waiter bustled about, laying a fresh plate and glass, “so you should. Your grand patrons, my little friend, though they may make a pretence of saving you from slaughter by taking your quarrel on their shoulders, are not likely to feed you at their own table. Lord, how that piece of antiquity, General Oglethorpe, swag gered across the porch at the Pantheon when I had half a mind to chastise you for your clumsiness in almost knocking me over! May I die, sir, if I wasn't at the brink of teaching the General a lesson which he would have remembered to his dying hour—his dying hour—that is to say, for exactly four minutes after I had drawn upon him.”
“Ah, Dr. Goldsmith is fortunate in his friends,” said Mrs. Abington. “But I hope that in future, Captain, he may reckon on your sword being drawn on his behalf, and not turned against him and his friends.”
“If you are his friend, my dear Mrs. Abington, he may count upon me, I swear,” cried the Captain bowing over the table.
“Good,” she said. “And so I call upon you to drink to his health—a bumper, sir, a bumper!”
The Captain showed no reluctance to pay the suggested compliment. With an air of joviality he filled his large glass up to the brim and drained it with a good-humoured, half-patronising motion in the direction of Goldsmith.
“Hang him!” he cried, when he had wiped his lips, “I bear Goldsmith no malice for his clumsiness in the porch of the Pantheon. 'Sdeath, madam, shall the man who led a company of his Majesty's regulars in charge after charge upon the American rebels, refuse to drink to the health of a little man who tinkles out his rhymes as the man at the raree show does his bells? Strike me blind, deaf and dumb, if I am not magnanimous to my heart's core. I'll drink his health again if you challenge me.”
“Nay, Captain,” said the lady, “I'll be magnanimous, too, and refrain from challenging you. I sadly fear that you have been drinking too many healths during the day, sir.”
“What mean you by that, madam?” he cried. “Do you suggest that I cannot carry my liquor with the best men at White's? If you were a man, and you gave a hint in that direction, by the Lord, it would be the last that you would have a chance of offering.”
“Nay, nay, sir! I meant not that,” said the actress hastily. “I will prove to you that I meant it not by challenging you to drink to Dr. Goldsmith's new comedy.”
“Now you are very much my dear,” said Jackson, half-emptying the brandy decanter into his glass and adding only a thimbleful of water. “Yes, your confidence in me wipes out the previous affront. 'Sblood, madam, shall it be said that Dick Jackson, whose name made the American rebels—curse 'em!—turn as green as their own coats—shall it be said that Dick Jackson, of whom the rebel Colonel—Washington his name is—George Washington”—he had considerable difficulty over the name—“is accustomed to say to this day, 'Give me a hundred men—not men, but lions, like that devil Dick Jackson, and I'll sweep his Majesty's forces into the Potomac'—shall it be said that—that—what the devil was I about to say—shall it be said?—never mind—here's to the health of Colonel Washington!”