Let me consider what kind of an adventure would have been likely to happen to Sir John Falstaff at such a time. I have one.
I can imagine a quiet, cheery-looking old man, in a long, sober-coloured gown, of comfortable well-to-do aspect, with a shrewd wrinkled face, elbowing his way imperceptibly to a place at the table near Sir John (the guests making room for him with some respect), and taking advantage of a lull in the conversation to say, with a twinkling eye and a somewhat admiring smile,—
“We should know each other, Sir John—we have been friends ere now.”
“Aye, aye, sir? ‘Tis possible. There are more men see Paul’s church than the Beadle wots of. But you have the best of me.”
“Will you share my tankard while I make myself known. Nay!—‘tis a choice Rochelle that mine host broaches only for me on my monthly visits to Coventry. You will not match it in the town vintry.
“Now you speak, sir, I should know your voice. Save you, sir. Nectar, by all the Pagans!”
“It is long since we met, Sir John.”
“Do you tell me that, sir? Twenty years at the least; if not nigher thirty. In Brittany, was it not?”
“Not so—not so.”
“In Flanders then, or Spain? * I have seen both countries.”