HARDCASTLE. (Taking the cup.) I hope you’ll find it to your mind. I have prepared it with my own hands, and I believe you’ll own the ingredients are tolerable. Will you be so good as to pledge me, sir? Here, Mr. Marlow, here is to our better acquaintance. [Drinks.]
MARLOW. (Aside.) A very impudent fellow this! but he’s a character, and I’ll humour him a little. Sir, my service to you. [Drinks.]
HASTINGS. (Aside.) I see this fellow wants to give us his company, and forgets that he’s an innkeeper, before he has learned to be a gentleman.
MARLOW. From the excellence of your cup, my old friend, I suppose you have a good deal of business in this part of the country. Warm work, now and then, at elections, I suppose.
HARDCASTLE. No, sir, I have long given that work over. Since our betters have hit upon the expedient of electing each other, there is no business “for us that sell ale.”
HASTINGS. So, then, you have no turn for politics, I find.
HARDCASTLE. Not in the least. There was a time, indeed, I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself. Since that, I no more trouble my head about Hyder Ally, or Ally Cawn, than about Ally Croker. Sir, my service to you.
HASTINGS. So that with eating above stairs, and drinking below, with receiving your friends within, and amusing them without, you lead a good pleasant bustling life of it.
HARDCASTLE. I do stir about a great deal, that’s certain. Half the differences of the parish are adjusted in this very parlour.
MARLOW. (After drinking.) And you have an argument in your cup, old gentleman, better than any in Westminster-hall.