Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/221

 the other tenants of the Jug being little to his taste.

“There was never a scurvier company in the Yard,” he explained. “’Tis full of none but common canters and divers, rude fellowship for a man of parts; and scarce a golden roundle among them.”

There was the rub; and, indeed, it was as much the entertainment I made for him as the love of my society as fetched him so often to see me. For I was in no lack of money, and would constantly have him in a pint of warm ale, the which he drank with tender regard.

“Ryder,” says he, “I have taken a liking to you. You are no common file, like the riff-raff outside; and damme, but if you must wear hemp, you shall wear it like a proper gentleman with the very best offices at your service.”

He was a rare sodden rogue was the Rev. Josiah Phipps—for that was his name—and mingled piety with liquor and oaths faster than any man I have encountered. For the most part he was drunken, when he alternated