Harry rejoined, with wet lips:  ’Wopping stuff, this ale!  Who’s that you want to kick?’

‘Somebody who objects to his bray, I suppose,’ Mr. Raikes struck in, across the table, negligently thrusting out his elbow to support his head.

‘Did you allude to me, sir?’ Laxley inquired.

‘I alluded to a donkey, sir.’  Raikes lifted his eyelids to the same level as Laxley’s:  ‘a passing remark on that interesting animal.’

His friend Harry now came into the ring to try a fall.

‘Are you an usher in a school?’ he asked, meaning by his looks what men of science in fisticuffs call business.

Mr. Raikes started in amazement.  He recovered as quickly.

’No, sir, not quite; but I have no doubt I should be able to instruct you upon a point or two.’

‘Good manners, for instance?’ remarked the third young cricketer, without disturbing his habitual smile.

‘Or what comes from not observing them,’ said Evan, unwilling to have Jack over-matched.

‘Perhaps you’ll give me a lesson now?’ Harry indicated a readiness to rise for either of them.

At this juncture the chairman interposed.

‘Harmony, my lads!—­harmony to-night.’

Farmer Broadmead, imagining it to be the signal for a song, returned: 

’All right, Mr.—–­ Mr. Chair! but we an’t got pipes in yet.  Pipes before harmony, you know, to-night.’

The pipes were summoned forthwith.  System appeared to regulate the proceedings of this particular night at the Green Dragon.  The pipes charged, and those of the guests who smoked, well fixed behind them, celestial Harmony was invoked through the slowly curling clouds.  In Britain the Goddess is coy.  She demands pressure to appear, and great gulps of ale.  Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children, but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement.  Precedence again disturbed the minds of the company.  At last the red-faced young farmer led off with ‘The Rose and the Thorn.’  In that day Chloe still lived; nor were the amorous transports of Strephon quenched.  Mountainous inflation—­mouse-like issue characterized the young farmer’s first verse.  Encouraged by manifest approbation he now told Chloe that he ’by Heaven! never would plant in that bosom a thorn,’ with such a volume of sound as did indeed show how a lover’s oath should be uttered in the ear of a British damsel to subdue her.

‘Good!’ cried Mr. Raikes, anxious to be convivial.

Subsiding into impertinence, he asked Laxley, ’Could you tip us a Strephonade, sir?  Rejoiced to listen to you, I’m sure!  Promise you my applause beforehand.’

Harry replied hotly:  ‘Will you step out of the room with me a minute?’

‘Have you a confession to make?’ quoth Jack, unmoved.  ’Have you planted a thorn in the feminine flower-garden?  Make a clean breast of it at the table.  Confess openly and be absolved.’