Page:Vanity Fair 1848.djvu/365

 fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats,—which is it wins? the good blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old boy, whilst I buzz this bottle here. What was I a saying?"

"I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to buzz.

"Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want to see a dawg as can kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom Corduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier as—"

"Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing at his own absurdity,—"you don't care about a dawg or a rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a dog and a duck."

"No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it was about blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which people derive from patrician birth. Here's the fresh bottle."

"Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid down. "Nothing like blood, Sir, in hosses, dawgs, and men. Why only last term, just before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha,—there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, Lord Cinqbar's son, having our beer at the Bell at Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a sling; couldn't even take the drag down,—a brute of a mare of mine had fell with me only two days before, out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke. Well, Sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat off at once—he stood up to the Banbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad, how he did drop, Sir, and what was it? Blood, Sir, all blood."

" You don't drink, James," the ex-attaché continued. "In my time, at Oxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you young fellows seem to do."

"Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking at his cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it on on me. You want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hay? I wish my aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's a precious good tap."

"You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or make the best of your time now. What says the bard, 'Nunc vino pellite curas Cras ingens iterabimus æquor,'" and the Bacchanalian quoting the above with a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimblefull of wine with an immense flourish of his glass.

At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from trying for more, and subsided either into the currant wine, or to some private gin-and-water in the stables, which he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited, but the quality was inferior: but when quantity and quality united, as at his aunt's house, James showed that he