"Why, what would you do?" said the clerk.

"Ay, sir, what would you do?" said the mercer, bustling up on the other
side of the table.

"Slit your throat, and spoil your Sunday's quavering, Sir Clerk,"
said Lambourne fiercely; "cudgel you, my worshipful dealer in flimsy
sarsenets, into one of your own bales."

"Come, come," said the host, interposing, "I will have no swaggering
here.--Nephew, it will become you best to show no haste to take offence;
and you, gentlemen, will do well to remember, that if you are in an inn,
still you are the inn-keeper's guests, and should spare the honour
of his family.--I protest your silly broils make me as oblivious as
yourself; for yonder sits my silent guest as I call him, who hath been
my two days' inmate, and hath never spoken a word, save to ask for his
food and his reckoning--gives no more trouble than a very peasant--pays
his shot like a prince royal--looks but at the sum total of the
reckoning, and does not know what day he shall go away. Oh, 'tis a jewel
of a guest! and yet, hang-dog that I am, I have suffered him to sit
by himself like a castaway in yonder obscure nook, without so much as
asking him to take bite or sup along with us. It were but the right
guerdon of my incivility were he to set off to the Hare and Tabor before
the night grows older."

With his white napkin gracefully arranged over his left arm, his velvet
cap laid aside for the moment, and his best silver flagon in his right
hand, mine host walked up to the solitary guest whom he mentioned, and
thereby turned upon him the eyes of the assembled company.