Chapter II
The Race.
"I will tell you how it all happened, and how it was that Miss Lambton—in short you shall hear it all—it's the first time I have spoken about it, but now it shall out; you shall judge and decide between us, by Jove you shall! You recollect it was in the beginning of June that we left your house, Richards, to go up the Mississippi—it was a Friday, a day that I hate. All seamen and hunters do hate it; it's an unlucky day. All the bad luck I ever had, came to me on Fridays. I had a feeling that something would go wrong when we went on board the Helen M'Gregor. I thought Miss Lambton looked shy upon me, and the old gentleman stiffer than ever. I followed the Miss, however, wherever she went, so close, that once or twice I trod the fringe off her petticoats."
"That was bad manners, Doughby."
"Pshaw! What did it matter? I told her not to bother her head about it, that when we got to New York, or even to Cincinnati or Louisville, I would buy her a whole shopful of dresses. She made no answer to that; but when I had the misfortune to tear her third flounce, she said, that if I went on in that way she would not have a whole gown left when she got to Louisville. 'With a whole one or none at all, Miss,' said I, 'you'll always be a charming creature.' That now was as pretty a compliment as ever was paid in Kentucky, but she did not seen to hear it.
"On the third day we were just passing St Helena, when old Lambton came up to me. 'Mister Doughby,' said he, quite confidential like, 'pardon me, my dear good Mister Doughby, but don't you think that you sometimes take rather too much ardent spirits, and thereby injure your health as well as give a bad example to your fellow-citizens, which, on the part of a respectable man like yourself, is very much to be regretted?'
"'Bad example!' says I—'to be regretted, Mister Lambton!—I take too much ardent spirits! I certainly am not of that opinion, Mister Lambton, and if you are I can only say you are very much mistaken. You shall see yourself,' said I, 'how much ballast an old Kentuckian can take in without sinking under it: devil a diving duck ever swallowed more water than a Kentucky man can rum.'
"I thought to let the old squaretoes see that he had a man before him, not one of his spindleshanked tallow-chopped Yankees, who go sneaking about the meeting-house from morning till night, or moping in their rooms, and calculating and speculating how they can best take in honest warm-blooded South and Westlanders. 'You shall see,' said I—but he shook his head and walked away, and I looked after him, and shook my head too. Pah! I found out afterwards that he was president of a temperance society, the devil take them all! Temperance societies! What is rum for, if it isn't to be drank?"
Doughby was rapidly warming with his subject.