A Good Fight.
BY CHARLES READE.
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CHAPTER III.
“The soup is hot,” said Gerard.
“But how are we to swallow it?” inquired the senior, despondingly.
“Father, the young man has brought us straws.” And Margaret smiled slily.
“Ay, ay!” said the old man: “but my poor bones are stiff, and indeed the fire is too hot for a body to kneel over with these short straws. St. John the Baptist! but the young man is adroit.”
For, while he stated his difficulty, Gerard removed it. He untied in a moment the knot on his breast, took his hat off his back, put three stones into the corner, then, wrapping his hand in the tail of his jerkin, whipped the flask off the fire, wedged it in between the stones, and put the hat under the old man’s nose with a merry smile. The other tremulously inserted the pipe of rye-straw and sucked. Lo and behold his wan, drawn face was seen to light up more and more, till it quite glowed; and, as soon as he had drawn a long breath:
“Hippocrates and Galen!” he cried, “’tis a ‘soupe au vin’—the restorative of restoratives. Blessed be the nation that invented it, and the woman that made it, and the young man who brings it to fainting folk. Have a suck, my girl, while I relate to our host the history and virtues of this his sovereign compound. This corroborative, young sir, was unknown to the ancients: we find it neither in their treatises of medicine, nor in those popular narratives, which reveal many of their remedies, both in chirurgery and medicine proper. Hector, in the Ilias, if my memory does not play me false,”
Margaret: “Alas! he’s off.”
“was invited by one of the ladies in the poem to drink a draught of wine; but he declined, on the plea that he was just going into battle,