c.

"There, then," his Reverence went on. "Bartholomew Pinchin Esquire's
more easily managed than you think for. Do you prove a good servant, and
it shall be my duty to make him show himself a good master to you. But I
must have no further parley with you here, else these Papistical
Ostenders will think that you are some Flemish lad (for indeed you have
somewhat of a foreign air), and I a Lutheran Minister striving to
convert you. Get you back to your Inn, good youth. Pay your score, if
you have one, and if you have not, e'en spend your guilder in treating
of your companions, and come to me at nine of the clock this evening at
the Inn of the Three Archduchesses. Till then, fare you well."

It must be owned that his Reverence's proposals were fair, and that his
conversation was very civil. As I watched him trotting up the Main
Street, his Cassock bulging out behind, I agreed with myself that
perhaps the most prudent thing I could do just at present would be to
put my gentility in my pocket till better times came round. There was a
Spanish Don, I believe, once upon a time, who did very nearly the same
thing with his sword.

At the appointed time I duly found myself at the sign of the Three
Archduchesses, which was the bravest Hostelry in all Ostend, and the one
where all the Quality put up. I asked for Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire,
in the best French that I could muster; whereupon the drawer, who was a
Fleming, and, I think, spoke even worse French than I did, asked me if I
meant the English Lord who had the grand suite of apartments looking on
the courtyard. I was fit to die of laughing at first to hear the
trumpery little Hampstead squire spoken of as a lord; but Prudence came
to my aid again, and I answered that such was the personage I came to
seek; and, after not much delay, I was ushered into the presence of Mr.
Pinchin, whose Esquiredom--and proud enough he was of it--I may now as
well Drop. I found him in a very handsome apartment, richly furnished,
drinking Burgundy with his chaplain, and with a pack of cards alongside
the bottles, and two great wax candles in sconces on either side. But,
as he drank his Burgundy, he ceased not to scream and whimper at the
expense he was being put to in having such a costly liquor at his table,
and scolded Mr. Hodge very sorely because he had not ordered some thin
Bordeaux, or light Rhine wine. "I'm drinking guineas," he moaned, as he
gulped down his Goblets; "it'll be the ruin