“Oh!  Mr. Allen, you mean.  Yes, I believe, he is very rich.”

“And no children at all?”

“No —­ not any.”

“A famous thing for his next heirs.  He is your godfather, is not he?”

“My godfather!  No.”

“But you are always very much with them.”

“Yes, very much.”

“Aye, that is what I meant.  He seems a good kind of old fellow enough, and has lived very well in his time, I dare say; he is not gouty for nothing.  Does he drink his bottle a day now?”

“His bottle a day!  No.  Why should you think of such a thing?  He is a very temperate man, and you could not fancy him in liquor last night?”

“Lord help you!  You women are always thinking of men’s being in liquor.  Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle?  I am sure of this —­ that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.  It would be a famous good thing for us all.”

“I cannot believe it.”

“Oh!  Lord, it would be the saving of thousands.  There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be.  Our foggy climate wants help.”

“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.”

“Oxford!  There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you.  Nobody drinks there.  You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost.  Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head.  It was looked upon as something out of the common way.  Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure.  You would not often meet with anything like it in Oxford —­ and that may account for it.  But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking there.”

“Yes, it does give a notion,” said Catherine warmly, “and that is, that you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did.  However, I am sure James does not drink so much.”

This declaration brought on a loud and overpowering reply, of which no part was very distinct, except the frequent exclamations, amounting almost to oaths, which adorned it, and Catherine was left, when it ended, with rather a strengthened belief of there being a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford, and the same happy conviction of her brother’s comparative sobriety.

Thorpe’s ideas then all reverted to the merits of his own equipage, and she was called on to admire the spirit and freedom with which his horse moved along, and the ease which his paces, as well as the excellence of the springs, gave the motion of the carriage.  She followed him in all his admiration as well as she could.  To go before or beyond him was impossible.  His knowledge and her ignorance of the subject, his rapidity of expression, and her diffidence of herself put that out of her power; she could strike out nothing