Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and his nose on a chicken. “That’s goo’!” he said, recovering, and rocking under Mrs. Berry’s eyes. “No friend!”
“I did not say, no friend,” she remarked. “I said, no one; meanin’, I know not where for to send it to.”
Ripton’s response to this was: “You put a Griffin on that cake. Wheatsheaves each side.”
“His crest?” Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
“Oldest baronetcy ’n England!” waved Ripton.
“Yes?” Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
“You think he’s Richards. We’re oblige’ be very close. And she’s the most lovely!—If I hear man say thing ’gainst her.”
“You needn’t for to cry over her, young man,” said Mrs. Berry. “I wanted for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then go about my day’s work, and I do hope you won’t keep me.”
Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
“You do?” he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.