Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/271

Rh think I may venture on one, if it 's only to drink your good health."

"Of course! certainly!" said the Old Boy; "it can't do you any harm, and it may put some colour in your cheeks. Your mother would be quite distressed if she were to see you looking so pale. Where have you felt your chief pain?"

"Chiefly here," replied the sick man, with a subdued smile, as he laid his hand over the region of his heart, and placed the port wine upon the table. "The symptoms have been unusually severe to-day. Let me fill your glass."

"Thank you, Percie! and fill your own also; I 'm sure it won't do you any harm. And here 's to your better health!" said the Old Boy. And as the wine gurgled in his throat, he thought, "Bless my life! how I have wronged the poor lad. His mother would be quite distressed to see him."

And thus Mr. Wylde senior was filled with the deepest repentance for the imaginary wrong he had done his son, in supposing that he had met him at Hyde Park Corner, when he had been lying so ill and pale in his Oxford rooms. And after the Scout had cleared away the remains of the dainty little banquet that had been sent in by the Confectioner,—in which feast Mr. Percival Wylde did eat more than was benefiting for the character of an æger man; excusing himself, however, on the presumptive medical fact, that heart complaints brought on great voracity of appetite when this banquet had been brought to a satisfactory termination, and when the Old Boy had been well warmed with a further supply of port—a generous beverage forwarded from his own cellars—he, then and there, in