"I'm not starving; I'm not in rags," I protested, with my Proud stomach.
"But you will be the day after to-morrow. The two things always go together. Come, my young friend, I'll own that Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, is not generous."
"Generous!" I exclaimed; "why, he's the meanest little hunks that ever lanced a paving stone to find blood for black puddings in it. Didn't he give me fourpence this morning for saving his life?"
"And didn't you tell him that his life wasn't worth more than a groat?" asked the Chaplain, with a sly grin; "besides insulting him on the question of Dutch cheese (to which he has an exquisite aversion), into the bargain?"
"That's true," I replied, vanquished by the Parson's logic.
"There, then," his Reverence went on. "Bartholomew Pinchin Esquire's more easily managed than you think for. Do you prove a good servant, and it shall be my duty to make him show himself a good master to you. But I must have no further parley with you here, else these Papistical Ostenders will think that you are some Flemish lad (for indeed you have somewhat of a foreign air), and I a Lutheran Minister striving to convert you. Get you back to your Inn, good youth. Pay your score, if you have one, and if you have not, e'en spend your guilder in treating of your companions, and come to me at nine of the clock this evening at the Inn of the Three Archduchesses. Till then, fare you well."
It must be owned that his Reverence's proposals were fair, and that his conversation was very civil. As I watched him trotting up the Main Street, his Cassock bulging out behind, I agreed with myself that perhaps the most prudent thing I could do just at present would be to put my gentility in my pocket till better times came round. There was a Spanish Don, I believe, once upon a time, who did very nearly the same thing with his sword.
At the appointed time I duly found myself at the sign of the Three Archduchesses, which was the bravest Hostelry in all Ostend, and the one where all the Quality put up. I asked for Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, in the best French that I could muster; whereupon the drawer, who was a Fleming, and, I think, spoke even worse French than I did, asked me if I meant the English Lord who had the grand suite of apartments looking on the courtyard. I was fit to die of laughing at first to hear the trumpery little Hampstead squire spoken of as a lord; but Prudence came to my aid again, and I answered that such was the personage I came to seek; and, after not much delay, I was ushered into the presence of Mr. Pinchin, whose Esquiredom—and proud enough he was of it—I may now as well Drop. I found him in a very handsome apartment, richly furnished, drinking Burgundy with his chaplain, and with a pack of cards alongside the bottles, and two great wax candles in sconces on either side. But, as he drank his Burgundy, he ceased not to scream and whimper at the expense he was being put to in having such a costly liquor at his table, and scolded Mr. Hodge very sorely because he had not ordered some thin Bordeaux, or light Rhine wine. "I'm drinking guineas," he moaned, as he gulped down his Goblets; "it'll be the ruin of me. A dozen of this is as bad as a Mortgage upon my Titmouse Farm. What'll my mamma say? I shall die in the poor-house." But all this time he kept on drinking; and it was not glass and glass about with him, I promise you, for he took at least three bumpers full to his Chaplain's one, and eyed that reverend personage grudgingly as he seized his opportunity, and brimmed up the generous Red Liquor in his tall-stemmed glass. Yet the Chaplain seemed in no way discountenanced by his scanty allowance, and I thought that, perchance, his Reverence liked not wine of Burgundy.
They were playing a hand of piquet when I was introduced; and they being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three shillings and sixpence.
"I can't pay it, I can't pay it," he said, making a most rueful countenance. "I'm eaten out of house and home, and sharped at cards besides. It's a shame for a Parson to play foul,—I say foul, Mr. Hodge. It's a disgrace to the cloth to bring your wicked card-cheating practices to devalise an English gentleman who is travelling for his diversion."