“Captain Wildrake,” said Albert, “we have no objection—I mean, my friend and I—to be communicative on proper occasions; but you, sir, who are so old a sufferer, must needs know, that at such casual meetings as this, men do not mention their names unless they are specially wanted. It is a point of conscience, sir, to be able to say, if your principal, Captain Everard or Colonel Everard, if he be a Colonel, should examine you upon oath, I did not know who the persons were whom I heard drink such and such toasts.”
“Faith, I have a better way of it, worthy sir,” answered Wildrake; “I never can, for the life of me, remember that there were any such and such toasts drunk at all. It’s a strange gift of forgetfulness I have.”
“Well, sir,” replied the younger Lee; “but we, who have unhappily more tenacious memories, would willingly abide by the more general rule.”
“Oh, sir,” answered Wildrake, “with all my heart. I intrude on no man’s confidence, d—n me—and I only spoke for civility’s sake, having the purpose of drinking your health in a good fashion”—(Then he broke forth into melody)—
“‘Then let the health go round, a-round, a-round, a-round,
Then let the health go round;
For though your stocking be of silk,
Your knee shall kiss the ground, a-ground, a-ground, a-ground,
Your knee shall kiss the ground.’”
“Urge it no farther,” said Sir Henry, addressing his son; “Master Wildrake is one of the old school—one of the tantivy boys; and we must bear a little, for if they drink hard they fought well. I will never forget how a party came up and rescued us clerks of Oxford, as they called the regiment I belonged to, out of a cursed embroglio during the attack on Brentford. I tell you we were enclosed with the cockneys’ pikes both front and rear, and we should have come off but ill had not Lunford’s light-horse, the babe-eaters, as they called them, charged up to the pike’s point, and brought us off.”
“I am glad you thought on that, Sir Henry,” said Wildrake; “and do you remember what the officer of Lunsford’s said?”
“I think I do,” said Sir Henry, smiling.
“Well, then, did not he call out, when the women were coming down, howling like sirens as they were—‘Have none of you a plump child that you could give us to break our fast upon?’”
“Truth itself!” said the knight; “and a great fat woman stepped forward with a baby, and offered it to the supposed cannibal.”