"Gad! I thought it was Nathan, and was going to send you souse into the
river. But I ask your pardon. You see I had been drinking at the Bell at
Hexton, and the punch is good at the Bell at Hexton. Hullo! you, Davis! a
bowl of punch; d'you hear?"

"I have had my share for to-night, cousin, and I should think you have,"
Harry continues, always in the dignified style.

"You want me to go, Cousin What's-your-name, I see," Mr. William said,
with gravity. "You want me to go, and they want me to come, and I didn't
want to come. I said, I'd see him hanged first,--that's what I said. Why
should I trouble myself to come down all alone of an evening, and look
after a fellow I don't care a pin for? Zackly what I said. Zackly what
Castlewood said. Why the devil should he go down? Castlewood says, and so
said my lady, but the Baroness would have you. It's all the Baroness's
doing, and if she says a thing, it must be done; so you must just get up
and come." Mr. Esmond delivered these words with the most amiable
rapidity and indistinctness, running them into one another, and tacking
about the room as he spoke. But the young Virginian was in great wrath.
"I tell you what, cousin," he cried, "I won't move for the Countess, or
for the Baroness, or for all the cousins in Castlewood." And when the
landlord entered the chamber with the bowl of punch, which Mr. Esmond had
ordered, the young gentleman in bed called out fiercely to the host, to
turn that sot out of the room.

"Sot, you little tobacconist! Sot, you Cherokee!" screams out Mr.
William. "Jump out of bed, and I'll drive my sword through your body. Why
didn't I do it to-day when I took you for a bailiff--a confounded
pettifogging bum-bailiff!" And he went on screeching more oaths and