“Is the place quite empty, then?”
“As a blessed drum, sir! Never a soul ’cept a couple o’ naun-account chaps. Lord, I dunno wot Sussex be a-comin’ tu, that I doan’t. Wot I sez is as them theer Preventives will ruin old England, aye by Goles, they will—dannel ’em! Shall us mak’ it French wine, sir, or summat a liddle stronger?”
“Nay, let it be October ale, thank ye, Mr. Levitt. And I’ll take it in the ‘tap.’”
“Why, sir,” demurred the landlord, “the ‘tap’ bean’t ’ardly the place for a gen’elman o’ your quality, an’ Sir ’Ector’s friend an’ arl.”
“But I’m minded for a bench and sanded floor,” smiled Sir John, and into the tap he took his way accordingly. It was a smallish chamber very orderly and clean, but empty except for a carter, in smock and leggings, who snored lustily with his head on the table, and a raw-boned individual with a shock of red hair and a dull, fish-like eye, who sat huddled in a corner and gloomed. To whom Sir John forthwith addressed himself:
“Friend, you drink nothing?”
“Well, an’ ’ow can I drink,” answered the red-headed man in surly tone; “’ow’s any man to drink out of a empty tankard?”
“That is easily amended.”
“Oh, is it, an arl—when a honest man’s pockets be as empty as ’is tankard an’ nobody to ax ’im to take nothin’?”