"Oh, Massa Jacob," said the placable Sally, "how can you say so?"
"But you are her relation you say, sir," continued the stranger; and here he turned round as if recollecting himself, and stuck his head through the window that looked into the piazza. Addressing some one who was tumbling portmanteaus and luggage about there—"I say, Felix, he can't be a brown chap, eh?—he don't look like it."
"Poo, poo! what if he be?" said the person spoken to—"What if he be?—order supper, man—curse this portmanteau! the straps are as stiff as iron hoops, and have broken my nails. You villain, Twister, why don't you come and help me, that I may get out my clothes?"
"Here, massa," said a blackie from the street, and the gentleman who had spoken now entered.
Sally had asked leave for the new comers to join our party, and as this might be according to rule in Jamaica, we consented of course, and they were presently seated at the same board.
The shortest of the two was a stout, sun-burned man, about thirty, with a round face, but a fine white forehead, and beautiful clustering brown hair. He was dressed in very short nankeen trowsers, very much faded, silk stockings, and shoes—rather an out-of-the-way rig for a traveller through dirty roads, as it struck me; and wore a long French-cut blue military frock or pelisse, garnished with a perfect plague of frogs.
This was largely open at the breast, displaying a magnificent whitish-blue cambric frill, while a neckcloth, with a strong dash of the same indigo shade, was twisted round his bull neck as gracefully as a collar round a mastiff's; while, above it, the peaks of his shirt stood up in such pomp of starch and stiffness, that I could not help considering his ears in some peril. When he entered, he had replaced the small, narrow-brimmed, glazed hat, that had been knocked off by Sally in her paroxysm; the oily appearance of which, in such a climate, was enough to make one perspire, and rolled in, quite at home apparently, with a hand stuck into each side-pocket. Altogether he looked like a broiled man; but when he sat down at table, I was refreshed by noticing that his hands were beautifully white; and, according to Lord Byron's maxim, I took this as a kind of voucher, for want of a better, that the nondescript was a gentleman. His companion was a tall, thin, dark, young fellow, apparently about twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, with short, curly, fair hair, dressed in white jean pantaloons, with long Hessian boots drawn up over them to his knees, white waistcoat and neckcloth, and a blue coat. There was nothing peculiar about his appearance. We all carried on for some time in silence. At length the shortest of my new acquaintances asked me to drink wine with him.
"Your good health, sir. Here's to our better acquaintance."
"Massa Jacob," quoth Mammy Sally, who was superintending the attendance of her servants, with a knowing look, "you know who you drink wine wid?"
Mr Twig looked round at her with an expression efface as if he neither knew nor cared.