Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/40

 bottles. I shook with laughter, and the Bishop smiled genially. “Speaking as one gentleman of the road would to another, Ryder,” says he, “I declare I have never kept such disreputable company in my life.”

I have confessed the wine was rich and cordial: it flowed warmly through my veins, and set my head high and whirling like a weather-cock. And at this jest I fell to laughing louder, for the thrust appeared to me a piece of pretty wit. I smacked my thigh, and bellowed till the rheum ran over my eyes, and at last I pulled up and found the Bishop very quiet and fallen into a kind of abstraction. In my merry mood I took this ill; for a gentleman must needs complete a bargain to the end, and I hate your sour looks and solemn faces.

“Look’ee, my lord,” I cried, with some choler, “if ’tis my Lord Petersham that you are regretting, why have it out, and let us finish your thoughts aloud.”

The Bishop lifted his eyebrows with a faint expression of amusement. “I vow, Ryder,”