“I've no doubt he'd receive it in a proper spirit,” said Bellingham, who was eating himself hot and red from the planked shad before him. “But you mustn't do it here.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Seyton, “Sewell is a very able man, and no end of a good fellow, but you can't expect me to admit he's a priest.”
He smiled in sweet enjoyment of his friend's wrath. Lemuel observed that he spoke with an accent different from the others, which he thought very pleasant, but he did not know it for that neat utterance which the Anglican Church bestows upon its servants.
“He's no Jesuit,” growled Meredith.
“I'm bound to say he's not a pagan, either,” laughed the clergyman.
“These gentlemen exchange these little knocks,” Bellingham explained to Lemuel's somewhat puzzled look, “because they were boys together at school and college, and can't realise that they've grown up to be lights of the bar and the pulpit.” He looked round at the different plates. “Have some more shad?” No one wanted more, it seemed, and Bellingham sent it away by the man, who replaced it with broiled chicken before Bellingham, and lamb chops in front of Mr. Seyton. “This is all there is,” the host said.
“It's enough for me,” said Meredith, “if no one else takes anything.”
But in fact there was also an omelet, and bread and butter delicious beyond anything that Lemuel had tasted; and there was a bouquet of pink radishes with fragments of ice dropped among olives, and other facts of a polite breakfast. At the close came a dish of what Bellingham called premature strawberries.
“Why! they're actually sweet!” said Meredith, “and they're as natural as emery-bags.”
“Yes, they're all you say,” said Bellingham. “You can have strawberries any time nowadays after New Year's, if you send far enough for them; but to get them ripe and sound, or distinguishable from small turnips in taste, is another thing.”