“Damn Newcastle Emlyn!” cried the squire, provoked by her continual reference to her native place. “Master! master!” cried the girl, as if rebuking him for the greatest impiety conceivable, “don’t damn Newcastle Emlyn; I had rather you should knock me down than damn Newcastle Emlyn! it is the country of decent people and good home-brewed ale,—the country where”—
“You brewed good ale from the grown wheat the first time,” said the squire, not deeming it necessary to notice her observations.
“Good! was it?” retorts the girl, struggling between respect for her master and contempt for his taste in the matter of malt drink; “good was it! I tell you what, master, you are a good master, and I have nothing to say against mistress, for it would not be decent, but you never tasted beer like ours at Newcastle Emlyn! the real hearty cwrw da! which I could make you to-morrow, if you would give me good malt and hops, and let it stand long enough untapped.”
“But Cardy, there must be a sound reason for your two last brewings being inferior to the first. You could brew a well-flavoured, palatable beer, but you don’t now, although you have the same ingredients given you.”
“The last was better, a good deal, than the other. The first would have turned the devil’s stomach, had he known what was in it.”
“Explain yourself,” said the squire, surprised. “I will, sir, if I were to be hanged for it,” cried the girl in a tone of confidence; “it seems that rats love beer as well as any christian folks, and get drunk and die in drink, as a warning to all sober-minded rats; but that is neither here nor there, and I hate to tell a rigmarole story; the long and the short of it is, that when I came to wash out the barrels after the first brewing, I found three rats in one, and two in the other.”
“You found what?” asked the squire and his lady at the same time.
“I found three rats, sir, that had burst themselves with drinking beer, and afterwards fell in and were drowned—they were then putrid, and it was that, it seems, that made the ale so palatable; there were no dead animals in the last brewing, so that of course it wasn’t so ‘palatable’ and well-flavoured as the other. But had I known your mind I might have killed a couple of cats, or put you in a bushel of lively cockroaches.”
This explanation excited a titter among the girls, and a loud laugh from the squire, while the lady evinced the shock which her delicacy had sustained, by making wry faces, and snuffing violently at her smelling-bottle to avoid fainting.
The squire good-humouredly addressed the girl,—“now, Cardy, you are perfectly right in the praise you bestow on your own country ale, and I promise you shall have the best of malt and hops for your next attempt, when I expect it to be equal to the best cwrw da of Newcastle Emlyn—and, do you hear? we shall dispense with either rats or cats in it for the future.”