"Belike I am—though I have Sergeant Zeb."
"But we'll change all that in a month—aye, less! You shall grow two or three hundred years younger and enjoy at last the youth you've never known."
"Faith, you'd give me much, Tom!"
The Viscount took out his snuff-box, tapped it, opened it, and forgot his affectations.
"Sir," said he, "there was, on a time, a little, wretched boy, who, hating and fearing his father, grieving in his sweet mother's griefs until she died, found thereafter a friend, very tender and strong, in a big, red-coated uncle——"
"By adoption, nephew."
"Aye sir, but I found him more truly satisfying to my youthful needs than any uncle by blood, Lord love me! At whose all too infrequent visits my boyish griefs and fears fled away—O Gad, sir, in those days I made of you a something betwixt Ajax defying the lightning and a—wet-nurse, and plague take it, sir, d'ye wonder if I——" Here the Viscount took a pinch of snuff and sneezed violently. "Rat me!" he gasped, "'tis the hatefullest stuff!" Followed a volley of sneezing and thereafter a feeble voice—"The which reminds me sir we must drink tea——"
"But I abominate tea, Tom."
"So do I, sir, so do I—curst stuff! You know the song:
'Let Mahometan fools
Live by heathenish rules
And be damned over tea-cups and coffee—'