The Antediluvians, undoubtedly the toast of the evening, were enthusiastically drunk, and in an ale of treble brew.

When they had quite gone down, Mr. Raikes ventured to ask for the reason of their receiving such honour from a posterity they had so little to do with.  He put the question mildly, but was impetuously snapped at by the chairman.

’You respect men for their luck, sir, don’t you?  Don’t be a hypocrite, and say you don’t—­you do.  Very well:  so do I. That’s why I drink “The Antediluvians"!’

‘Our worthy host here’ (Drummond, gravely smiling, undertook to elucidate the case) ’has a theory that the constitutions of the Postdiluvians have been deranged, and their lives shortened, by the miasmas of the Deluge.  I believe he carries it so far as to say that Noah, in the light of a progenitor, is inferior to Adam, owing to the shaking he had to endure in the ark, and which he conceives to have damaged the patriarch and the nervous systems of his sons.  It’s a theory, you know.’

‘They lived close on a thousand years, hale, hearty—­and no water!’ said the chairman.

‘Well!’ exclaimed one, some way down the table, a young farmer, red as a cock’s comb:  ’no fools they, eh, master?  Where there’s ale, would you drink water, my hearty?’ and back he leaned to enjoy the tribute to his wit; a wit not remarkable, but nevertheless sufficient in the noise it created to excite the envy of Mr. Raikes, who, inveterately silly when not engaged in a contest, now began to play on the names of the sons of Noah.

The chairman lanced a keen light at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

Before long he had again to call two parties to order.  To Raikes, Laxley was a puppy:  to Laxley, Mr. Raikes was a snob.  The antagonism was natural:  ale did but put the match to the magazine.  But previous to an explosion, Laxley, who had observed Evan’s disgust at Jack’s exhibition of himself, and had been led to think, by his conduct and clothes in conjunction, that Evan was his own equal; a gentleman condescending to the society of a low-born acquaintance;—­had sought with sundry propitiations, intelligent glances, light shrugs, and such like, to divide Evan from Jack.  He did this, doubtless, because he partly sympathized with Evan, and to assure him that he took a separate view of him.  Probably Evan was already offended, or he held to Jack, as a comrade should, or else it was that Tailordom and the pride of his accepted humiliation bellowed in his ears, every fresh minute:  ‘Nothing assume!’ I incline to think that the more ale he drank the fiercer rebel he grew against conventional ideas of rank, and those class-barriers which we scorn so vehemently when we find ourselves kicking at them.  Whatsoever the reason that prompted him, he did not respond to Laxley’s advances; and Laxley, disregarding him, dealt with Raikes alone.

In a tone plainly directed at him, he said:  ’Well, Harry, tired of this?  The agriculturals are good fun, but I can’t stand much of the small cockney.  A blackguard who tries to make jokes out of the Scriptures ought to be kicked!’