To revive his good humour, Temple uncorked a bottle of champagne.  The tramp-woman lent us a tin mug, and round it went.  One boy said, ’That’s a commencement’; another said, ‘Hang old Rippenger.’  Temple snapped his fingers, and Bystop, a farmer’s son, said, ’Well, now I’ve drunk champagne; I meant to before I died!’ Most of the boys seemed puzzled by it.  As for me, my heart sprang up in me like a colt turned out of stables to graze.  I determined that the humblest of my retainers should feed from my table, and drink to my father’s and Heriot’s honour, and I poured out champagne for the women, who just sipped, and the man, who vowed he preferred beer.  A spoonful of the mashed tarts I sent to each of the children.  Only one, the eldest, a girl about a year older than me, or younger, with black eyebrows and rough black hair, refused to eat or drink.

‘Let her bide, young gentlemen,’ said a woman; ’she’s a regular obstinate, once she sets in for it.’

‘Ah!’ said the man, ’I’ve seen pigs druv, and I’ve seen iron bent double.  She’s harder ’n both, once she takes ‘t into her head.’

‘By jingo, she’s pig-iron!’ cried Temple, and sighed, ’Oh, dear old Heriot!’

I flung myself beside him to talk of our lost friend.

A great commotion stirred the boys.  They shrieked at beholding their goose vanish in a pot for stewing.  They wanted roast-goose, they exclaimed, not boiled; who cared for boiled goose!  But the woman asked them how it was possible to roast a goose on the top of wood-flames, where there was nothing to hang it by, and nothing would come of it except smoked bones!

The boys groaned in consternation, and Saddlebank sowed discontent by grumbling, ’Now you see what your jolly new acquaintances have done for you.’

So we played at catch with the Dutch cheese, and afterwards bowled it for long-stopping, when, to the disgust of Saddlebank and others, down ran the black-haired girl and caught the ball clean at wicket-distance.  As soon as she had done it she was ashamed, and slunk away.

The boys called out, ‘Now, then, pig-iron !’

One fellow enraged me by throwing an apple that hit her in the back.  We exchanged half-a-dozen blows, whereupon he consented to apologize, and roared, ‘Hulloa, pig-iron, sorry if I hurt you.’

Temple urged me to insist on the rascal’s going on his knees for flinging at a girl.

‘Why,’ said Chaunter, ‘you were the first to call her pig-iron.’

Temple declared he was a blackguard if he said that.  I made the girl take a piece of toffy.

‘Aha!’ Saddlebank grumbled, ’this comes of the precious company you would keep in spite of my caution.’

The man told us to go it, for he liked to observe young gentlemen enjoying themselves.  Temple tossed him a pint bottle of beer, with an injunction to him to shut his trap.

‘Now, you talk my mother tongue,’ said the man; ’you’re what goes by the name of a learned gentleman.  Thank ye, sir.  You’ll be a counsellor some day.’