“Boys, healths apiece!” cried Davy.
“Healths apiece, Capt’n!” answered numerous thick voices, and up leaped a line of yellow glasses.
“Ate, drink—there’s plenty, boys; there’s plenty,” said Davy.
“Aw, plenty, capt’n—plenty.”
“Come again, boys, come again,” said Davy, from time to time; “but clane plates—aw, clane plates—I hould with being nice at your males for all, and no pigging.”
Thus the supper went on for an hour, and then Davy by way of grace said, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, praise His holy name.”
“A ‘propriate tex’, too,” said the church-warden. “Aw, it’s wonderful the scriptural the Captn’s getting when he’s a bit crooked,” he whispered behind the back of his hand.
After that Davy stretched back in his chair and cried, “Your pipes in your faces, boys. Smook up, smook up; chimleys everywhere, same as Douglas at breakfast time.”
For Davy’s sake Lovibond had sat at table with the guests, though their voracity had almost turned his stomach. At sight of the green light of greed in their eyes he had said to himself, “Davy is a rough fellow, but a born Christian. These creatures are hogs. Why doesn’t his gorge rise at them?” When the supper was done, and while the cloth was being removed, amid the clatter of dishes and the striking of lights, Lovibond rose and slipped out of the room.
Davy saw him go, and from that moment he became constrained and silent. Sucking at his pipe and devoting himself steadily to the drink, he answered in hum’s and ha’s and that’ll do’s to the questions put to him, and his laughter came out of him at intervals in jumps and jerks like water from the neck of a bottle.