“Porther—a pint!” exclaimed the ferocious Hibernian.
“Pale ale for me,” intimated his friend.
“Pint of porter and pint palale for gentle-men!” vociferated the waiter. “Weggitubles—bread?” he next demanded.
“No bread—greens!” ejaculated the Irishman.
“Bread and potatoes for me,” said his companion.
“One bread—one greens—one taturs—for gentle-men!” cried the waiter, thus conveying his last instructions to the young lady who officiated at the bar; and the said young lady sent each fresh order down a pipe communicating with the kitchen—her own voice being as affected and her manner as lackadaisical as the waiter was natural, rapid, and bustling.
But before the various luxuries thus commanded were hoisted from the kitchen to the bar by means of the moveable dumb-waiter that worked up and down between the two places just mentioned,—we must pause to inform our readers—if indeed they have not already suspected the fact—that the two visitors to the dining-establishment in Bucklersbury, were our old friends Captain O’Blunderbuss and Mr. Francis Curtis!
The gallant Irishman had now numbered sixty-four years; and although the lapse of time had rendered his head completely bald, and turned his whiskers and moustachios to a bright silver, the ferocity of his aspect remained unaltered, and his fiery disposition was unsubdued. He was still the terrible Captain O’Blunderbuss—ready to exchange shots with any one and on all occasions—and more devoted to poteen than ever. His form was as erect as when in the prime of life; and his military coat, all frogged and braided, was buttoned over an ample chest that no stoop had contracted. The captain had grown somewhat stouter than when we took leave of him nineteen years previously to our present date; but his physical strength seemed to have remained unimpaired.
Frank Curtis was now forty-three. He also had “filled out,” as the phrase is; but his countenance, in fattening, had lost nothing of its ignoble expression of self-sufficiency and impudent conceit; and his manner was as flippant as ever. Neither had he laid aside any portion of his mendacious habits, but had rather added thereto by varying the style of his boastings and the nature of his lies. He continued to dress in a flashy way—delighting in a hat of strange appearance, and in a waistcoat concentrating in a yard of stuff all the colours which have existence and name upon earth.
We must however admit—for the truth cannot be blinked in this respect—that there was a certain air of seediness about both the captain and Mr. Frank Curtis, which neither the bullying insolence of the former nor the impertinent self-sufficiency of the latter could altogether throw into the shade. It was evident that they had lost the confidence of their tailors and hatters—and even of their washerwomen;—for their garments might have been less thread-bare, and their wristbands a trifle cleaner. We say “wristbands,” because those were the only portions of their shirts which met the eye—the captain’s frogged coat and Mr. Curtis’s faded double-breasted waistcoat being each buttoned up to its owner’s throat.