“No; I can't smoke without something to drink, which I foresee I shall not have here.” “I deplore my inhospitality.” “Inhospitality! why, you have nothing to say to it. It is old mother Maxwell receives us all here. You can be neither hospitable nor inhospitable, so far as I see, excepting, perhaps, letting me see a little more of that fire than you have done hitherto, peacocking out the tail of your dressing-gown in front of me.” “Pray draw closer,” said Maitland, moving to one side; “make yourself perfectly at home here.” “So I used to be, scores of times, in these very rooms. It's more than five-and-twenty years that I ever occupied any others.” “I was thinking of going back to the drawing-room for a cup of tea before I resumed my work here.” “Tea! don't destroy your stomach with tea. Get a little gin,--they 've wonderful gin here; I take a glass of it every night Beck mixes it, and puts a sprig of, not mint, but marjoram, I think they call it I 'll make her mix a brew for you; and, by the way, that brings me to what I came about.” “Was it to recommend me to take gin?” asked Maitland, with a well-assumed innocence. “No, sir; not to recommend you to take gin,” said the old Commodore, sternly. “I told you when I came in that I had come on an errand of some importance.” “If you did, it has escaped me.” “Well, you sha'n't escape me; that's all.” “I hope I misunderstand you. I trust sincerely that it is to the dryness of your throat and the state of your tonsils that I must attribute this speech. Will you do me the very great favor to recall it?” The old man fidgeted in his chair, buttoned his coat, and unbuttoned it, and then blurted out in an abrupt spasmodic way, “All right,--I did n't mean offence--I intended to say that as we were here now--that as we had this opportunity of explaining ourselves--” “That's quite sufficient, Commodore. I ask for nothing beyond your simple assurance that nothing offensive was intended.” “I 'll be hanged if I ever suffered as much from thirst in all my life. I was eighteen days on a gill of water a day in the tropics, and didn't feel it worse than this. I must drink some of that stuff, if I die for it. Which is the least nauseous?” “I think you'll find the Vichy pleasant; there is a little fixed air in it, too.” “I wish there was a little cognac in it. Ugh! it's detestable! Let's try the other. Worse! I vow and declare--worse! Well, Maitland, whatever be your skill in other matters, I 'll be shot if I 'll back you for your taste in liquors.” Maitland smiled, and was silent.