Rockney might
have had to say, and anything would have served. The latter clasped the
decanter, poured and drank in silence.

''Tis the doctor's antidote, and best for being antedated,' Captain Con
rapped his friend's knuckles.

'As long as you're contented with not dating in double numbers,' retorted
the doctor, absolutely scattering the precious minutes to the winds, for
he hated a provocation.

'There's a golden mean, is there!'

'There is; there's a way between magnums of good wine and gout, and it's
generally discovered too late.'

'At the physician's door, then! where the golden mean is generally
discovered to be his fee. I've heard of poor souls packed off by him
without an obolus to cross the ferry. Stripped they were in all
conscience.'

'You remind me of a fellow in Dublin who called on me for medical advice,
and found he'd forgotten his purse. He offered to execute a deed to
bequeath me his body, naked and not ashamed.'

'You'd a right to cut him up at once, Forbery. Any Jury 'd have
pronounced him guilty of giving up the ghost before he called.'

'I let him go, body and all. I never saw him again.'

'The fellow was not a lunatic. As for your golden mean, there's a saying:
Prevention is better than cure: and another that caps it: Drink deep or
taste not.'

'That's the Pierian Spring.'

'And what is the wine on my table, sir?'

'Exhaustless if your verses come of it.'

'And pure, you may say of the verses and the fount.'

'And neither heady nor over-composed; with a blush like Diana confessing
her love for the young shepherd: it's one of your own comparisons.'

'Oh!' Con could have roared his own comparisons out of hearing. He was
angry with Forbery for his obstructive dulness and would not taste the
sneaking compliment. What could Forbery mean by paying compliments and
spoiling a game! The ten minutes were dancing away like harmless
wood-nymphs when the Satyr slumbers. His eyes ranged over his guests
despondently, and fixed in desperation on Mr. Rumford, whom his
magnanimous nature would have spared but for the sharp necessity to
sacrifice him.

The wine in Rumford at any rate let loose his original nature, if it
failed to unlock the animal in these other unexcitable Saxons.

'By the way, now I think of it, Mr. Rumford, the interpretation of your
Royal Standard, which perplexes you so much, strikes me as easy if you
'll examine the powerfully different colours of the two beasts in it.'