"Wassail, you chaps!" he shouted.

"Wassail, old sport!" they shouted back; "we'd jolly well drink y'r
health, only we've nothing to drink it in."

"Come and wassail inside," said Bertie hospitably; "I'm all alone, and
there's heap's of 'wet'."

They were total strangers, but his touch of kindness made them instantly
his kin. In another moment the unauthorised version of King Wenceslas,
which, like many other scandals, grew worse on repetition, went echoing
up the garden path; two of the revellers gave an impromptu performance on
the way by executing the staircase waltz up the terraces of what Luke
Steffink, hitherto with some justification, called his rock-garden. The
rock part of it was still there when the waltz had been accorded its
third encore. Luke, more than ever like a cooped hen behind the
cow-house bars, was in a position to realise the feelings of
concert-goers unable to countermand the call for an encore which they
neither desire or deserve.

The hall door closed with a bang on Bertie's guests, and the sounds of
merriment became faint and muffled to the weary watchers at the other end
of the garden. Presently two ominous pops, in quick succession, made
themselves distinctly heard.

"They've got at the champagne!" exclaimed Mrs. Steffink.

"Perhaps it's the sparkling Moselle," said Luke hopefully.