Richard was surprised.
For, as I am pained to have to say, the Virginians had in those days the very irrational habit of drinking before dinner; and it was to this fact that Uncle Dick alluded in the somewhat figurative language recorded above. If the truth must be told, our venerable serving-man never doubted but that the Don stayed up-stairs simply because he was too drunk to come down. The facts were far otherwise.
“Charley,” said I that night, as we were smoking our last pipe, “what was the matter with the Don to-day? Why was he not with us when we sat down to dinner?”
“Because,” said Charley, lazily lolling back in his rocking-chair, and sighting with one eye through a ring of smoke that he had just projected from his mouth,—“because he was in his room.”
“Another word, and Solomon’s fame perishes.”
“It is a well-known physical law” (Charley used to avenge himself on me in private for his silence in general company),—“it is a well-known physical law,” said he, inserting his forefinger with great precision into the centre of the whirling ring, “that a body cannot occupy two—”
“To be continued in our next. But why was he not punctual, as usual?”
“Nothing simpler,—because he was behind time.”
“Solon, Solon!”
“Yes, Sir William Hamilton has well observed that it is positively unthinkable that the temporal limitations of two events occurring at different times should be identical. Let’s have another pipe.”