“We gentlemen of Norfolk,” he replied, without any appearance of shame, “are honest topers all. I deny it not. Yet what matters such a trifle in the habits of a man? Did any gentlemen in the county drink harder than my father? Yet he was hale and tough at sixty, and would have lived to eighty but for a fall he got riding home one night after dinner, having a cask, or thereabouts, of port inside him, by reason of which he mistook an open quarry for the lane which should have led him home, and therefore broke his neck.”
“So that, if his wife loved him, as no doubt she did, it was the drink that robbed her of a husband. Your tale hath a useful moral, Sir Miles.”
“Come, pretty Puritan, look at me. I am twenty-nine—in my thirtieth year; strong and hearty, if I do get drunk of an evening. What then? Do you want to talk to your husband all night? Better know that he is safe asleep, and likely to remain asleep till the drink is gone out of his head.”
“Oh, the delights of wedlock! To have your husband brought home every night by four stout fellows!”
“Evening drink hurts no man. Have I a bottle nose? Do my hands shake? Are my cheeks fat and pale? Look at me, Kitty.” He held out his arms and laughed.
“Yes, Sir Miles,” I replied; “I think you are a very lusty fellow, and, in a wrestling-bout, I should think few could stand against you. But as a husband, for the reasons I have stated, I say—No!”
“Take the four hundred, Kitty, and make me happy. I love thee, my girl, with all my heart.”
“Sir Miles, I cannot do it honestly. Perhaps I wish I could.”
“You won’t?” He looked me full in the face. “I see you won’t. You have such a telltale, straightforward face, Kitty, that it proclaims the truth always. I believe you are truth itself. They pulled you out of a well, down in your country place, in a bucket, and then went about saying you had been born.”
“Thank you, Sir Miles.”