Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/42

 points of honour ever since I served the Spaniard, and I would not have you provoke me to the degree of falling foul.”

“Why, what would you do?” said the clerk.

“Ay, sir, what would you do?” said the mercer, bustling up on the other side of the table.

“Slit your throat, and spoil your Sunday’s quavering, Sir Clerk,” said Lambourne, fiercely; “cudgel you, my worshipful dealer in flimsy sarsenets, into one of your own bales.”

“Come, come,” said the host, interposing, “I will have no swaggering here.—Nephew, it will become you best to show no haste to take offence; and you, gentlemen, will do well to remember, that if you are in an inn, still you are the innkeeper’s guests, and should spare the honour of his family.—I protest your silly broils make me as oblivious as yourself; for yonder sits my silent guest as I call him, who hath been my two days’ inmate, and hath never spoken a word, save to ask for his food and his reckoning—gives no more trouble than a very peasant—pays his shot like a prince royal—looks but at the sum total of the reckoning, and does not know what day he shall go away. O, ’tis a jewel of a guest! and yet, hang-dog that I am, I have suffered him to sit by himself like a castaway in yonder obscure nook, without so much as asking him to take bite or sup along with us. It were but the right guerdon of my incivility, were he to set off to the Hare and Tabor before the night grows older.”

With his white napkin gracefully arranged over his left arm, his velvet cap laid aside for the mo-