'nothing like imperance. Let's go and see what he's up to,' says I. 'Not a bit of it,' says master. 'Let's have a little brandy'—"
"Teddy Rouse all over!" exclaimed Obadiah. "Brandy's the fructifying spirit of the cloth."
"What do you mean?" said Jones, indignantly. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that Teddy Rouse———"
"Why do you call him Teddy Rouse? My master's name is the Reverend Mr. Rouse."
"But his christian name is Teddy!"
"Not a bit of it! Them as calls him Teddy is ignoramuses."
"Do you mean to say that I'm an ignoramus?"
"You're worser!—or you'd never have brought that there turnip to me, and have said that I couldn't produce nothing like it. He as calls my master Teddy is an ignoramus! I don't care who he is! I'll tell him to his face he's an ignoramus. My master's name is the Reverend Mr. Rouse, and I don't care who knows it."
"Brayvo!" cried the company. "Brayvo, Jones!"
"Talk of Teddy," continued Jones, "as if he were your equal. I'll back my master—the Reverend Mr. Rouse—to look a ghost in the face against any man in England. Teddy, indeed! When he gave you the last order for a hundred of bricks, you didn't call him Teddy then, did you?"
"But Teddy," said Obadiah, "is the short for Edward. I meant no offence."
"Call me Teddy, Jack, Jem, or any thing you like, but I'll fight till I drop before he shall be called Teddy."
'"Well, then, let it be the Reverend Mr. Rouse; I don't care, that's the man I meant after all."
"I know it's the man you meant," returned Jones, who was still very indignant, "but if any man—I don't care who he is—calls him Teddy, I won't have it! I know what master is, and I know what he isn't: there ain't a man in life as knows him better than me, and am I to hear him—hear a gentleman, and what's more, a clergyman—called Teddy?"
'Don't mind him," whispered Legge; "you know what a tattling fellow he is. You should take no notice of anything he says."
"Well," said Obadiah, "and what did the Reverend Mr. Rouse do when he had swallowed the brandy?"
"Go and inquire!" returned Jones, fiercely. "You'll not get another blessed word out of me!"
"Well, but don't go yet!" they exclaimed, as he rose—"oh, stop and have a pipe with us—don't go yet!"
Jones, however, could not be prevailed upon to stay: he left at once, and the company, of whom the majority were at first very indignant with Obadiah, began to discuss, with characteristic ingenuity and eloquence, the various bearings of the scene which Jones had thus briefly described. This discussion—interspersed as it was with an infinite variety of anecdotes—lasted the whole of the day, and when at night
