When they sat down to luncheon and the butler asked if he would drink hock or claret, the brewer turned to him and in a loud, brusque voice inquired whether there was no beer. “I always drink it to show I have confidence,” he explained to the company in general. “It makes me fat, but I shouldn’t be worth my salt if I hesitated at a few more pounds avoirdupois at the call of duty. I’ve told the British public on fifty thousand hoardings to drink Durant’s Half-Crown Family Ale, and the British public do. The least they can expect of me is to follow their example.” The Canon was somewhat taken aback by the frankness with which Sir John referred to the source of his large income, but he was a man of tact, and with a laugh insisted on trying that foaming beverage. “What d’you think of it?” asked the brewer, when Canon Spratte at one draught had emptied his glass. “Capital, capital!” “I’ll send you some to-morrow. It’s good stuff, my dear Canon--as pure as mother’s milk, and it wouldn’t hurt a child. I’ve no patience with those brewers who are ashamed of the beer they make. Why, do you know, Lord Carbis won’t have it in his house, and when I stayed with him, I had to drink wine. The old fool doesn’t know that people only laugh at him. However many airs he puts on, he’ll never make them forget that he owes his title to stout and bitter. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t mind who knows that I started as a van boy. If I’ve built up the biggest connection in the trade, it’s to my own brains I owe it.” Mrs. Fitzherbert laughed to herself when she saw the expression with which the Canon received this statement. His idea had been that Sir John belonged to the aristocracy of beerdom, with two or even three generations of gentlemen behind him who had prepared themselves for the manufacture of fermented liquors by a career at Eton and at Oxford. It was fortunate that his cursory inspection of the brewer’s daughter had been satisfactory. She was quite pretty, with a complexion whose robust colouring suggested the best of health; and her brown hair, rather abundant and waving naturally, grew low on the forehead in a way that Canon Spratte thought singularly attractive. He knew something about feminine costume, (there were few subjects of which the Canon was entirely ignorant,) and he observed with satisfaction that she was clothed with taste and fashion. He had no patience with the women who dressed in a mode they thought artistic, and he abhorred the garb which is termed rational. In a moment of expansion he had once told his daughter there were two things a woman should avoid like the seven deadly sins: she should never take her hair down and never wear a short skirt. “A woman, like a cat, should always end in a tail,” said he.