"What a rum 'un you are! Fogg had his funny ways, but I do think you beat him, that you do. Well, if I must say I have a partiality, it's to brandy. Do you know, I think, between you and me and the post, that a drop of good brandy is rather one of them things that makes human nature what it is."
"What a just remark," said Todd.
Peter looked as sage as possible. He was getting upon wonderfully good terms with his own sagacity—a certain sign that he was losing his ordinary discretion. Todd opened a small cupboard in the wall—what a number of small cupboards in the wall Todd had—and produced a long-necked bottle and a couple of glasses. He held the bottle up to the dim light, saying—
"That's the thing, rather."
"It looks like it," said Peter.
"And it is," said Todd, "what it looks. This bottle and the liquor within it have basked in the sun of a fairer clime than ours, Peter, and the laughing glades of the sweet south have capped it in beauty."
Peter looked puzzled.
"What a learned man you are, Mr. T.," he said. "You seem to know something of everything, and I dare say the brandy is to the full as good as it looks."
This was decidedly a quiet sort of hint to decant some of it without further loss of time, and Todd at once complied. He filled Peter's glass to the brim, and his own more moderately; and as the golden liquor came out with a pleasant bubble from the bottle, Peter's eyes glistened, and he sniffed up the aroma of that pure champaign brandy with the utmost complaisance.
"Beautiful! beautiful!" he exclaimed.