t belie you,
yet at times you have the conscience of a ranting dissenter. I find in you
a touch both of Selwyn's dry wit and of Balmerino's frostly bluntness; the
cool daring of James Wolfe combined with as great a love of life as Murray
has shown; the chivalry of Don Quixote and the hard-headedness of
Cumberland; sometimes an awkward boy, again the grand manner Chesterfield
himself might envy you; the obstinacy of the devil and----"

"Oh, come!" I broke in laughing. "I don't mind being made a composite
epitome of all the vices of the race, but I object to your crossing the
Styx on my behalf."

"And that reminds me of the time we came so near crossing together," he
broke out, diverting the subject in his inconsequent fashion. "D'ye
remember that Dr. Mead who dressed our wounds for us after our little
argument? It appears that he and a Dr. Woodward fell into some
professional dispute as to how a case should be treated, and Lud! nothing
would satisfy them but they must get their toasting forks into action. The
story goes that they fought at the gate of Gresham College. Mead pinked
his man. 'Take your life,' quoth he. 'Anything but your medicine,' returns
Woodward just before he faints. Horry Walpole told me the story. I suppose
you have heard Selwyn's story of Lord Wharton. You know what a spendthrift
Wharton is. Well the Duke of Graftsbury offered him one of his daughters
in marriage, a lady of uncertain age and certain temper. But the lady has
one virtue; she's a devilish fine fortune. A plum, they say! Wharton wrote
Graftsbury a note of three lines declining the alliance because, as he put
it, the fortune was tied up and the lady wasn't."

"Not bad. Talking of Selwyn, I suppose he gets his fill of horrors these
days."

"One would think he might. I met him at the Prince's dinner yesterday, and
between us we two emptied nine bottles of maraschino. Conceive the
splitting headache I'm wearing to-day."

"You should take a course in Jacobitism," I told him gravely. "'Tis
warranted to cure gout, liver trouble, indigestion, drunkenness, and
sundry other complaints. I can warrant that one lives simply while he
takes the treatment; sometimes on a crust of bread and a bowl of brose,
sometimes on water from the burn, never does one dine over-richly."

"Yet this course is not conducive to long life. I've known a hundred
followers of it fall victim to an epidemic throat disease," he retorted.
Then he added more gravely, "By th