“‘Yet as he is a military man, he must know enough of the etiquette of these affairs to feel perfectly confident that he has affronted me; and the opinion of a military man, standing, as of course he does, in the rank and position of a gentleman, could not, I think, be overlooked without disgrace.’
“‘Fight him, by all means,’ said Wooden-leg Waddy.
“‘But then, talking of gentlemen, I own he is an officer of the 48th, but his father is a fish-tackle seller in John Street, Kilkenny, who keeps a three-halfpenny shop, where you may buy everything, from a cheese to a cheese-toaster, from a felt hat to a pair of brogues, from a pound of brown soap to a yard of huckaback towels. He got his commission by his father’s retiring from the Ormonde interest, and acting as whipper-in to the sham freeholders from Castlecomer; and I am, as you know, of the best blood of the Burkes—straight from the De Burgos themselves—and when I think of that, I really do not like to meet this Mr Brady.’
“‘Do not fight him, by any means,’ said Wooden-leg Waddy.”
“This advice of your friend Waddy to you,” said Tom Meggot, interrupting Burke, “much resembles that which Pantagruel gave Panurge on the subject of his marriage, as I heard a friend of mine, Percy, of Gray’s Inn, reading to me the other day.”
“I do not know the people you speak of,” continued Bob, “but such was the advice which Waddy gave me.
“‘Why,’ said I, ‘Wooden-leg, my friend, this is like playing battledore and shuttlecock; what is knocked forward with one hand is knocked back with the other. Come, tell me what I ought to do.’
“‘Well,’ said Wooden-leg, taking the meerschaum out of his mouth, ‘in dubiis suspice, &c. Let us decide it by tossing a halfpenny. If it comes down head, you fight—if harp, you do not. Nothing can be fairer.’
“I assented.
“‘Which,’ said he, ‘is it to be—two out of three, as at Newmarket, or the first toss to decide?’