You may be sure that I was nothing loth to accept an invitation that was as unexpected as it was desirable. The bewilderment of the justice, the constable and his men, and the poor gypsies too, was boundless as I briskly followed this extraordinary gentleman when he hobbled back to his chair, and promptly ensconced my disreputable self in one of the high-backed oaken seats of my forefathers, now so courteously placed at my disposal. While he proceeded to refill my glass and his own too, the scandalized magistrate very naturally expostulated in the most vehement manner.
"Why, Harry, God save us all!" he cried, "have you gone horn-mad? It is the most outrageous thing that ever was perpetrated. I vow and protest, Harry, that you are gone stark mad to bring a thief and a gypsy to my table to share your cups. It is unbearable, Harry, and 'fore God I will not have it. When this gets wind in the county they will deride me to death. Lord, I shall get struck off the justice-roll."
"Your petitioner will ever pray," says Harry, while simultaneously we raised the distraught justice's good claret to our lips.
Taking my cue from the familiarity of my entertainer, I threw aside restraint and adopted the attitude of a guest in lieu of the humbler one of a prisoner. Continuing to gaze about completely at my ease, says I, with that frank criticism that had been formerly so effective:
"Things are no longer what they were. This place hath deteriorated since I was in it last. The city creeps into the ancestral hall; cheesemongery obtrudes itself. Where formerly there were Old Masters and French Tales, there are now Bibles and bad prints. But I rejoice to see that some few of my ancestors are still faithful to their old-time haunt. My parents, my grand parents, my uncles, my cousins and my aunts, Vandycks, Lelys, and Knellers, and the devil knows who, are still assembled here, even to the replica of Sir Peter's picture of that nobleman, most illustrious of his race, who made a Commentary on the Analects of Confucius, the original of which I last saw in the shop of a Jew dealer the other day."
My singular acquaintance with the contents of his dining-room, evidently far more extensive than his own, was not without its effect on the justice.
"What is the meaning of all this, Harry?" he asked of my benefactor. "What is the fel——what is the man talking of? What does the man mean by his ancestors? Who ever heard such impudence, such effrontery?"
"Well, Tommie," says his frank friend, "I'll lay my last guinea that he hath more right to call them his ancestors than their present owner."
"A murrain take you," says the justice, more purple than before, for this was a stab in a tender place. "Will you never learn to control your infernally long tongue? And yet again must I ask you not to address me as Tommie when I am in the exercise of my high functions. Thomas if you like, or my full title would be still better on these occasions. The King would not have conferred it upon me, were it not designed for use, and that he desired I should profit by it."
His friend nearly choked himself with laughter long before the justice had come through this solemn homily. Indeed he could not recover his breath until he had poured himself out another glass of wine, and had refilled mine.