Soon as the dishes were removed, pipes were brought out and tankards sent on their rounds. By this time poor old Tim's weak brains were muddled, and he was discovered leaning back against the wall and mumbling out the tag-end of an old song:—
"On' Humphry wi' his flail,
But Kitty she wur the charming ma-aid
To carry th' milking pa-ail!"
This set them on singing, and Roaring Billy insisted on bawling out at the top of his stentorian lungs the doleful ditty of "Lord Bateman and his Daughters," which ran to thirty verses, and lasted half-an-hour. Hardly were the last words out of his mouth, when an impatient wight struck up the "Leathern Bottel," and heartily did they all join in the chorus, down to where the ballad describes the married man wanting to beat his wife, and using a glass bottle for the purpose, which broke and let all the wine about:—
"Whereas it had been the Leathern Bottel,
The stopper been in he might banged away well,"
without danger of creating an unanswerable argument in favour of leathern bottles.
By this time they were pretty well "boozed." A thick cloud of tobacco-smoke filled the kitchen. Heads were rolling about from side to side and arms stretched over the tables among the débris of broken pipes and in pools of spilt beer and froth. Despite these rude, unromantic surroundings, Absalom and Madge were leaning close against each other, hand-in-hand, almost silent, but looking in each other's eyes. What account takes passion of pipes or beer, smoke or drunken men, of snores and hoarse voices? None: they were oblivious of these things.