“Ha! so I did, so I did. Did she like it, Sam?”
“Like it?” said Sam, opening his eyes, “I warrant her!”
“Well, Sam, I hope it did her good;—never mind. You must fare as I do, I am afraid,” said he to the other. “Bring out the whisky-jar, Sam.”
Bolton mixed himself a glass without further preface or apology; and his neighbour, with the remark that it could not be much amiss after a wetting, very moderately followed his example.
“And now,” said Bolton, rummaging in a little cupboard behind him, “I hope you don’t dislike the smell of tobacco. I’m rather too fond of it myself. My weakness is a pipe: I could find you a cigar, perhaps, if you are ever—”
“Thank you, I never do smoke; but pray do not mind me: I was at a German university for a year and a half, and that is a pretty fair apprenticeship to cloud-raising.”
Took a doctor’s degree there, no doubt, thought Harry; but it served excellently as an opening for general conversation; and two pipes had been consumed, and Molly had twice informed the gentlemen that the beds were all ready, and that Sam was waiting to know if there were any orders for to-morrow, before Harry remembered that he had a sermon still to finish, and that it was verging upon Sunday morning—so intelligent and agreeable had been the discourse of the stranger.
“If you please, sir,” said the clerk, putting his head in at the door, “the rain is a-coming down like nothing, and that great hole over the pulpit ben’t mended yet. Master Brooks promised me it should be done afore to-night; but he’s never seen to it.”
“That Brooks is the very—but, there, it can’t be helped to-night, Sam, at all events,” said Bolton, rather ashamed that the defects of his parochial administration should be exposed, as it were, to the enemy. “I must speak to him about it myself.”
“I clapped a couple of sods over it as well as I could, sir,” said the persevering Sam; “and I don’t think much wet can come in to hurt, like. Will this gentleman ’ficiate to-morrow?” (this was in a loud confidential whisper) “’cause the t’other surplice an’t—”