"I say, little Sir Bingo," said the Squire, "this is the very fellow that we saw down at the Willow-slack on Saturday--he was tog'd gnostically enough, and cast twelve yards of line with one hand--the fly fell like a thistledown on the water." "Uich!" answered the party he addressed, in the accents of a dog choking in the collar. "We saw him pull out the salmon yonder," said Mowbray; "you remember--clean fish--the tide-ticks on his gills--weighed, I dare say, a matter of eighteen pounds." "Sixteen!" replied Sir Bingo, in the same tone of strangulation. "None of your rigs, Bing!" said his companion, "--nearer eighteen than sixteen!" "Nearer sixteen, by ----!" "Will you go a dozen of blue on it to the company?" said the Squire. "No, d---- me!" croaked the Baronet--"to our own set I will." "Then, I say done!" quoth the Squire. And "Done!" responded the Knight; and out came their red pocketbooks. "But who shall decide the bet?" said the Squire, "The genius himself, I suppose; they talk of asking him here, but I suppose he will scarce mind quizzes like them." "Write myself--John Mowbray," said the Baronet. "You, Baronet!--you write!" answered the Squire, "d---- me, that cock won't fight--you won't." "I will," growled Sir Bingo, more articulately than usual. "Why, you can't!" said Mowbray. "You never wrote a line in your life, save those you were whipped for at school." "I can write--I will write!" said Sir Bingo. "Two to one I will." And there the affair rested, for the council of the company were in high consultation concerning the most proper manner of opening a communication with the mysterious stranger; and the voice of Mr. Winterblossom, whose tones, originally fine, age had reduced to falsetto, was calling upon the whole party for "Order, order!" So that the bucks were obliged to lounge in silence, with both arms reclined on the table, and testifying, by coughs and yawns, their indifference to the matters in question, while the rest of the company debated upon them, as if they were matters of life and death. "A visit from one of the gentlemen--Mr. Winterblossom, if he would take the trouble--in name of the company at large--would, Lady Penelope Penfeather presumed to think, be a necessary preliminary to an invitation." Mr. Winterblossom was "quite of her ladyship's opinion, and would gladly have been the personal representative of the company at St. Ronan's Well--but it was up hill--her ladyship knew his tyrant, the gout, was hovering upon the frontiers--there were other gentlemen, younger and more worthy to fly at the lady's command than an ancient Vulcan like him--there was the valiant Mars and the eloquent Mercury."