“Nay,” said Master Peasegood, taking up a pipe, and beginning to open the little linen bag of weed, taking some out, and carefully shredding it with a knife. “Those have all been proved to be sins. This has not.”
“If you wish, I will try it, then,” said the father; and, as the tobacco was passed to him, he filled the little pipe before him, took the light provided by his friend, held it to the bowl, and puffed, while Master Joseph Peasegood did the same.
One little pipeful was smoked in silence, the ashes tapped from the bowl, and they smoked another pipeful, staring stolidly one at the other, as they sat on opposite sides of the table, till they had done, when there was a pause.
“What do you think of it?” said Master Peasegood, who, after several paroxysms of coughing, had refrained from trying to swallow the smoke, and contented himself with taking it into his mouth, and puffing it out.
“I feel more sick than sinful,” said the father, quietly. “And you?”
“I have a peculiar tightness of the brain, and a tendency to fancy I am as thin as thee, instead of as fat as I. Father Brisdone, in my present state, I think the greatest sin I should commit would be to go to my couch. Wilt try another pipe?”
“Nay,” said Father Brisdone, “I think two will suffice. King James must have felt like I when he wrote his work on this wondrous weed. It strikes me as strange that man should care to burn this herb when it is so medical in its effects.”
“Ay, it is,” said Master Peasegood. “It reminds me of my sensations when I was once prevailed upon by Dame—nay, she was Mistress Beckley then, for Sir Thomas had not paid a thousand pounds for his title—by Mistress Beckley to drink of a wonderful decoction of hers, made of sundry simples—agrimony, rue, marshmallow, and dandelion. It has always been my custom to drink heartily, Father Brisdone, so I drank lustily from the silver mug in which it was placed. Poor mug, it was an insult to the silver to put such villainous stuff therein. The very swine would have turned up their noses and screwed their tails; and I forsooth, for good manners’ sake, gulped it down. Here, father, drink some of this honest ale, and let us take the taste of the Indian weed from our lips.”
He passed the big mug to his friend, and he drank and returned it to Master Peasegood, who quaffed most heartily; and then, with doleful visages, the two friends sat and gazed in each other’s eyes.
“I don’t feel any better, Father Brisdone,” said Master Peasegood at last. “If this be a sin, this smoking, it carries its own punishment. Let us out into the open air.”