"Food!" cried Mr. Pindar, vivaciously; "and drink! necessities, base if you will, but grateful, sir, grateful! Brother, I pledge you!"
"Brother, I drink to you!" cried Mr. Homer, filling his glass with a trembling hand. "To our reunion, sir! the—the rekindling of—of affection's torch, my dear brother. Long may it—"
"Blaze!" cried Mr. Pindar, with a sudden skip in his chair. "Snap! crackle! flame! crepitate! Pindar to Homer shall, bright glass to glass—enough!" He ceased suddenly, and fell upon the crackers and cheese with excellent appetite.
Mr. Homer watched him in anxious and bewildered silence: once or twice he opened his lips as if about to speak, but closed them each time with a sigh and a shake of the head. The visitor was the first to speak, beginning, when the last cracker had disappeared, as suddenly as he had left off.
"Brother," he said, "why am I here?"
Mr. Homer repeated the words vaguely: "Why are you here, my dear brother? I doubt not that affection's call, the—voice of sympathy, of—a—brotherhood, of—consanguinity,—a—sounded in your ears—"
"Trumpets!" Mr. Pindar struck a sonorous note, and nodded thrice with great solemnity. "Alarums and excursions; enter long-lost brother, centre. You are right, Homer; but this was not all. The Dramatic Moment, sir, had struck."
With these words, he folded his arms, and, dropping his head on his breast, gazed up through his eyebrows in a manner which Mr. Homer found highly disconcerting.
"Oh, indeed!" said Mr. Homer, with vague politeness.
"Struck!" repeated Mr. Pindar, nodding solemnly. "Sounded. Knelled—no! tolled—not precisely! larumed, sir, larumed!"