"Ay, ay, many's the quart of wine we've drunk together after supper, in my rash days. Your father would have all drink that were about him. Even his dogs he would make drunk. A great man for dogs. I mind me of a prick-eared cur he had, would drink sack with the best of us, and sit on a stool at table with us, and howl with us when we sang our ballads. And there was a terrier, too; I have my reason not to forget him."
"Yes," quoth Ravenshaw; "he bit you in the calf o' the leg the last time you were at our house."
"Nay, that was a water-spaniel did that," said the goldsmith.
Ravenshaw remembered now that Holyday had said a water-spaniel; but he thought it would appear the more natural if he should seem to be in this point tricked by memory, as, in some detail or other, people often are.
"Nay," said he, "I am sure it was the terrier; I remember it as well—"
"Oh, no, never, never the terrier; 'twas the water-spaniel, on my word. Why, I never see the spaniels diving for ducks in the ponds at Islington but I think of it."
But Ravenshaw feigned to be unconvinced, and when, after some further talk, he yielded the point, it was as if merely out of courtesy. When the supper party rose from the table, the captain was for a pipe of tobacco, which he forthwith produced. But Master Etheridge said he was no tobacconist, and that the smoke made his lady ill. Ravenshaw replied that, by their leave, he would then take a turn or two, and a whiff or two, in the garden, whose beauty, observed by him from the window, invited closer acquaintance. Etheridge liked to hear his garden commended before his wife, as its implied sufficiency saved him the expense of a garden with a summer-house in the suburbs, which many a citizeness compelled her husband to possess. So he went cheerfully ahead to show the way.
"When you return, you shall find us in the withdrawing room, across the passage," said Mistress Etheridge.
Ravenshaw bowed to the ladies; in doing which, he met Mistress Millicent's eyes with a look that said as plainly as spoken words: "I have something for your ears." This intimation, in view of the circumstances of their former meeting, could not fail to engage her interest.
The goldsmith led him down-stairs to the ground floor passage, whence a door opened to a narrow way running past the rear of the house to the little garden. This comprised a square of green turf, in the centre of which was an apple-tree, now in blossom; a walk led to and around this tree, and another walk enclosed the whole square. This latter walk was flanked on the outer side by rosemary and various shrubbery, banks of pinks and other flowers; which screened the garden walls except where a gate gave entrance from Friday Street. The farther side of the garden was sheltered by a small arbour of vines; beneath this was a bench, and another bench stood out upon the turf, so that one might sit either in sun or in shade.