"Not a bad idea, Ned," answered the baronet. "Stay, stay, doctor, he's not condemned yet, and so does not want the parson. We had better talk to old Wittingham first. We'll have him in and fuddle him. Give my compliments to Mr. Wittingham, Matthews, and beg him to walk in. You need not go, Harriet. He's quite a lady's man." But Mrs. Clifford rose, not at all anxious to witness the process of fuddling a magistrate, and withdrew with her daughter and her niece. CHAPTER XII. In which the Magistrate is fuddled by the Baronet. "Ah! Wittingham! Wittingham!" cried the baronet, stretching forth his hand without rising, as the servant introduced the worthy magistrate, "is that you, my old buck? If you haven't come in pudding-time, you have come in wine-time, and will get what so few men get in life,--your dessert. Sit down and pledge me, old fellow. What shall it be in? Here's port that was bottled when I came of age, so you may judge that it is good old stuff! Madeira that has made more voyages than Cook, Comet Claret of 1811, and a bottle of Burgundy that smells under my nose like oil of violets." "Why, Sir John," replied Mr. Wittingham, taking the seat just left vacant by Mrs. Clifford, and very well pleased with so familiar a reception, when he expected quite the reverse; for to say the truth, although some circumstances had happened to make him resolve upon taking the bull by the horns, and visiting the old lion of Tarningham Park in his den, it was nevertheless with great pain and difficulty that he had screwed his courage to the sticking-point, "why, Sir John, I come upon business, and it is better to transact affairs of importance with a clear head." "Pooh, nonsense!" exclaimed the baronet; "no man ever did business well without being half drunk. Look at my old friend Pitt, poor fellow! and Charley Fox, too, Sir William Scott, and Dundas, and all of them, not a set of jollier topers in the world than they were, and are still--what are left of them. Well, here's health to the living and peace to the dead--Burgundy, eh?" and he filled a glass for Mr. Wittingham to the brim.