“I am very curious to become acquainted with this comical being,” said the major.
“Suppose we walk into the village,” said Mr. Seymour; “we shall be certain of finding him smoking his pipe on a bench before the alehouse door; where he is as regularly stationed by his patroness, to catch customers, as the saucer of treacle is placed in the window of a pastry-cook to attract flies.”
“You will excuse my accompanying you,” cried Mr. Twaddleton; “I cannot relish his stale jokes and potted stories.”
The gentlemen accordingly directed their route through Forest Lane, and took leave of the vicar at the entrance of the church-yard. On arriving within twenty yards of the public-house, Mr. Seymour noticed a column of smoke which curled in wreaths about its porch. “There sits Ned,” cried he; “I knew we should find him at his post.”
“Hopkins! Hopkins!” cried Mr. Seymour, “I fear you have not taken the worthy vicar’s advice.”
“An old dog cannot alter its way of barking, sir; nor is it easy to straight in the oak the crook that grew in the sapling.”
“I am to presume, then, to speak courteously, that you are still, ‘a man of leisure.’”
“Ay, verily am I; as idle, sir, as a chimney in the dog-days,” replied the wag of the tap-room.
“That, by the by, is not a very happy simile of yours, when applied to a man who is smoking all day long,” observed Mr. Seymour.
“I admit it,” said Ned, “so here’s another for you,--as lazy as Ludlam’s dog, that leaned his head against the wall to bark. But, after all, Mr. Seymour, a day of leisure is to me a golden age, and I am of my Lord Peterborough’s way of thinking, who used to say, ‘a golden age was that in which every one might pipe when and where he pleased.’”