With some hesitation, I proposed it.
He smiled; and as if rather complying with my humour, or as if unwilling to offend me by a refusal, said, "Well, my young friend, I have no objection, although I am not greatly in the habit of going to taverns. Not there, however," he added, seeing me moving towards the house on which I had fixed my eye. "There is a house in the Saltmarket, which, on the rare occasions I do go to a tavern, and that is chiefly for a sight of the papers, I always frequent. They are decent, respectable people. So we'll go there, if you please; that is, if it be quite the same to you."
I said it was, and that I would cheerfully accompany him wherever he chose.
This point settled, we proceeded to the Saltmarket; when my friend, who, by the way, had now told me that his name was Lancaster, conducted me up a dark, dirty-looking close, and finally into a house of anything but respectable appearance. The furniture was scanty, and what was of it much dilapidated: half the backs of half the chairs were broken off, the tables were dirty and covered with stains and the circular marks of drinking measures. A tattered sofa stood at one end of the apartment, the walls were hung with paltry prints, and the small, old-fashioned, dirty windows hung with dirtier curtains.
To crown all, we met, as we entered, a huge, blowzy, tawdrily dressed woman, of most forbidding appearance, who, I was led to understand, was the mistress of the house. Between this person and Mr. Lancaster I thought I perceived a rapid secret signal pass as we came in, but was not sure.
All this—namely, the appearance of the house and its mistress, the shabbiness of the entrance to the former, the secret signal, etc. etc.—surprised me a little; but I suspected nothing wrong—never dreamt of it.
On our taking our seats in the apartment into which we had been shown, I asked my good genius, Mr. Lancaster, what he would choose to drink.
He at once replied that he drank nothing but wine; spirits and malt liquors, he said, always did him great injury.
But too happy to be able to contribute in any way to the gratification of one who had rendered me so essential a service, I immediately ordered a bottle of the best port, he having expressed a preference for that description of wine.
It was brought; when Mr. Lancaster, kindly assuming the character of host, quickly filled our glasses, when we pledged each other and drank.