"But in time," said Chestnut, "your grape-juice becomes a Madeira. Certainly this is delicious! How refined, how delicate it is!"
"Ah, you will learn," cried Wilmington. "But wait a little. A grape-juice never becomes what we denominate a Madeira."
"I don't agree with you," said the host.
"We are in very deep water now," laughed Francis. "I, myself, think the finest of the old dry Madeiras were once sugary maidens."
"Nonsense," said Hamilton, passing the next wine. "With the sun."
"Why with the sun?" said Chestnut, infinitely delighted by these little social superstitions and the odd phrases.
"Because it sours a wine to send it to the right," said Wilmington, dryly. "That is a fact, sir,—a well-known fact."
"Droll, that," returned Chestnut. "I wonder whence came that notion."
"It is a pretty old one; possibly Roman. The Greeks passed their drink to the right. Wine is a strange fluid. It has its good and its bad days."
"I am willing to say its moods," added Hamilton.