“So you’ve come here for my vote, have you?” said Mr. Tom.
“Why, no; not exactly that,” Mr. Andrew answered, blinking and passing it by.
Jonathan brought the fresh pint, and Tom filled for himself, drank, and said emphatically, and with a confounding voice:
“Your women have been setting you on me, sir!”
Andrew protested that he was entirely mistaken.
“You’re the puppet of your women!”
“Well, Tom, not in this instance. Here’s to the bachelors, and brother Tom at their head!”
It seemed to be Andrew’s object to help his companion to carry a certain quantity of Port, as if he knew a virtue it had to subdue him, and to have fixed on a particular measure that he should hold before he addressed him specially. Arrived at this, he said:
“Look here, Tom. I know your ways. I shouldn’t have bothered you here; I never have before; but we couldn’t very well talk it over in business hours; and besides you’re never at the Brewery till Monday, and the matter’s rather urgent.”
“Why don’t you speak like that in Parliament?” the old man interposed.