Hereupon Jack looked about him in a helpless sort of fashion, as indeed well he might, and catching sight of his wig lying in the middle of the floor, promptly kicked it into a corner, which seemed to relieve him somewhat, for he went to it and, picking it up again, knocked out the dust upon his knee, and setting it on very much over one eye, sat himself down again, flushed and panting, but calm.
"Mr. Tawnish," says he, "as regards my daughter, I must ask—nay demand—that you cease your persecution of her once and for all."
"Sir John," says Mr. Tawnish, bowing across the table, "allow me to suggest in the most humble and submissive manner, that the word 'persecution' is perhaps a trifle—I say just a trifle—unwarranted."
"Be that as it may, sir, I repeat it, nevertheless," says Jack, "and furthermore I must insist that you communicate no more with the Lady Penelope either by poetry or—or any other means."
"Alas!" sighs Mr. Tawnish, "cheat myself as I may, the possibility will obtrude itself that you do not look upon my suit with quite the degree of warmth I had hoped. Sir, I am not perfect, few of us are, but even you will grant that I am not altogether a savage?" As he ended, he helped himself to another pinch of snuff with a pretty, delicate air such as a lady would use in taking a comfit; indeed his hand, small and elegantly shaped, whose whiteness was accentuated by the emerald and ruby ring upon his finger, needed no very strong effort of fancy to be taken for a woman's outright. I saw Jack's lip curl and his nostrils dilate at its very prettiness.
"There be worse things than savages, sir," says he, pointedly.
"Indeed, Sir John, you are very right—do but hearken to the brutes," says Mr. Tawnish, with lifted finger, as from the floor above came a roar of voices singing a merry drinking-catch, with the ring of glasses and the stamping of spurred heels. "Hark to 'em," he repeated, with a gesture of infinite disgust; "these are creatures the which, having all the outward form and semblance of man, yet, being utterly devoid of all man's finer qualities, live but to quarrel and fight—to eat and drink and beget their kind—in which they be vastly prolific, for the world is full of such. To-night it would seem they are in a high good humour, wherefore they are a trifle more boisterous than usual, indulging themselves in these howlings and shoutings, and shall presently drink themselves out of what little wit Dame Nature hath bestowed upon 'em, and be carted home to bed by their lackeys—pah!"
"How—what?" gasps Jack, while I sat staring (very nearly open-mouthed) at the cool audacity of the fellow.
"Are you aware, sir," cries Jack, when at last he had regained his breath, "that the persons you have been decrying are friends of mine, gallant gentlemen all—aye, sir, damme, and men to boot!—hard-fighting, hard-riding, hard-drinking, six-bottle gentlemen, sir?"
"I fear me my ignorance of country ways hath led me into a grave error," says Mr. Tawnish, with a scarce perceptible shrug of the shoulders; "upon second thoughts I grant there is about a man who can put down one throat what should suffice for six, something great."