"How do you like it, Jim?"
Taking his pipe from between his teeth, his face beaming with a kind of solemn satisfaction:
"Like it," he replied, "it's same as being i' heaven!"
He had in fact attained to the very acme of enjoyment; comfortably seated in his chair, enjoying his pipe, his sense of hearing charmed by the orators' well-turned periods, and, as he expressed it, "he could sup when he'd a mind!" I have often seen my friends since then, and I find that that evening spent in the discussion room at Coger's Hall is marked with a red letter in their memory.
"Drufty Ned" was well named, and he had numberless ways of raising the wind when he wanted a gill with never a bodle to pay for it. One day he called at Owd Sall o' Croppers, who kept the "Hit or Miss" beerhouse and sold oatcake baked in Lancashire fashion on a "bakstone."
"Let's ha' hauve a dozen o' yor oatcakes, Sall," said Ned, as he sat down by the fireside and leaned his elbows on the well-scrubbed table in the tap-room.
The cakes were brought. "Bring me a gill o' ale, Sall, while aw warm mi toes a bit." The ale was tabled, and Ned pretending he was short of change, hands Sall back two of the oatcakes.
"Here, Sall, take pay for th' ale wi' two o' th' oatcakes." Sall looked at him dubiously, but took the proffered payment.