"In very few places in the country will you get such madeira as this," said Sir Francis, in order to change the conversation.
"And nowhere in the town," said Rowland warmly. "No one thinks of keeping good wines in town to be guttled down by foreigners, adventurers, fraudulent speculators, and beggared noblemen. No, no. If your country gentleman has a brand of which he is particularly proud or fond, he keeps it down in the country, where he and his real friends, who come to him on cordial invitations, can discuss it gravely, un-distracted by the bore of comparative strangers, and the noise and smoke of the city. Good wine, Granby, should never be drunk when there is another house within a mile, or with men you have not known twenty years."
"Well, well, well;" which was the great man's formula for dismissing a subject. "Let it be--let it be. Suppose you drop the Duke and his wines. What do you think of your other patient? Don't you think he'd make a very good soldier?"
"Good heavens, Granby, the town has turned your brain! Make a soldier of him! A soldier of a man with such a torso, and limbs, and muscles! Won't the puny and the deformed do you for soldiers? Isn't anything good enough to pull a rifle-trigger or be shot at? Your parade soldiers, all puffed and padded, are good enough to please the vanity of the eye; but their puffs and pads are all in their own way. They don't help them to chase a man or kill a man. They are stuck on them for no more reason than women wore crinolines. Why should we try to get the finest men of all the nation into an institution or force which boasts of being ready to expose these men to sudden death at any moment--a duty which, by-the-way, they are very seldom called upon to fulfil?"
"Rowland, I now go farther than ever I went with you about London: I must strongly recommend you not to go there."
"Of course not; I told you I should never suit it or it me. But I'll tell you what our friend the burly patient would make, Granby--he'd make a magnificent coal-porter, or corn-porter, or backwoodsman."
"Well, well, well, you are hard on the young man. But we cannot agree on several points that have arisen; but on two we are agreed: that the Duke cannot live more than a few days, and that nothing can be done?"
"Yes."
"And that the other man will be all right with care in a very short time?"
"Yes, Granby, that's how I read it."