“I shall be obliged; but don’t let me intrude. Give my compliments, and say I have looked in simply to enquire after their health.”
Here Mr Wagtail shouted from the inner apartment.
“Hillo! Tom, my boy! Tom Cringle!—here, my lad, here!”
I was shown into the room from whence the voice proceeded, which happened to be Massa Aaron’s bedroom: and there were my three friends stretched on sofas, in their night-clothes, with a blanket, sheet, and counterpane over each, forming three sides of a square round a long table, on which a most capital dinner was smoking, with wines of several kinds, and a perfect galaxy of wax candles, and their sable valets, in nice clean attire, and smart livery coats, waiting on them.
“Ah, Tom,” quoth Massa Paul, “delighted to see you,—come, you seem to have dry clothes on, so take the head of the table.”
I did so; and broke ground forthwith with great zeal.
“Tom, a glass of wine, my dear,” said Aaron. “Don’t you admire us classical, after the manner of the ancients, eh? Wagtail’s head-dress, and Paul’s night-cap—oh, the comforts of a woollen one! Ah, Tom, Tom, the Greeks had no Kilmamock—none.”
We all carried on cheerily, and Bang began to sparkle.
“Well, now since you have weighed the schooner and found not much wanting I feel my spirits rising again.—A glass of champagne, Tom, your health, boy.—The dip the old hooker has got must have surprises the rats and cockroaches. Do you know, Tom, I really have an idea of writing a history of the cruise; only I am deterred from the melancholy consciousness that every blockhead nowadays fancies he can write.”
“Why, my dear sir, are you not coquetting for a compliment? Don’t we all know, that many of the crack articles in Ebony’s Mag” “Bah,” clapping his hand on my mouth; “hold your tongue; all wrong in that....”