"Very well, then, make me up one," said I, pompously.
"It shall be done, sir," said my father, obsequiously.
I occupied myself with reading until dinner-time. At length the dinner came up.
"A pint of your best port, landlord," I cried, magnificently.
My father returned with the port, crusted and cob-webbed, from the cellar, and I began my dinner. Having finished, I filled my pipe, and whilst my father cleared the table, I deigned to enter into conversation with him.
I began by asking him the number of inhabitants in the village, and then brought him out upon the subject of the epidemic.
"Ah! sir," said my father, deeply moved, "it carried off my only son some three weeks ago, and a finer lad you wouldn't see in all England. I hoped that he would have been the prop of my old age, but he was carried off, sir, along with the rest—struck down in the very spring of his youth, as you may say. Only nineteen was my poor boy when he was taken from me," and my father's eyes moistened as he spoke.
"Only nineteen!" I exclaimed. "Was he not strong?"
"Strong, sir! I believe you—strong as a lion," said my father.
"Dear me!" I said, "it is very strange that his youth and strength did not resist the malady."