“William shall
Be rich and great;
And shall prove
A constant mate.
Thank not me,
But thank your fate,
On whose high
Decrees I wait.”
“Well, won't that do? won't it bring the house down? I'm going to send for dresses to London, and we'll start next week.”
“What, on the tramp, singing these songs?”
“Yes; we'll begin in some out-of-the-way place till we get used to it.”
“And end in the lock-up, I should say,” said Tom; “it'll be a good lark, though. Now, you haven't told me how you got home.”
“Oh, we left camp at about five—”
“The tinker having extracted a sovereign from Drysdale,” interrupted Blake.
“What did you give to the little gypsy yourself?” retorted Drysdale; “I saw your adieus under the thorn-bush.—Well, we got on all right to old Murdock's, at Kingston Inn, by about seven, and there we had dinner; and after dinner the old boy came in. He and I are great chums, for I'm often there, and always ask him in. But that beggar Blake, who never saw him before, cut me clean out in five minutes. Fancy his swearing he is Scotch, and that an ancestor of his in the sixteenth century married a Murdock!”
“Well, when you come to think what a lot of ancestors one must have had at that time, it's probably true,” said Blake.
“At any rate, it took,” went on Drysdale. “I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he understood every word.”