‘I mean the usquebaugh,’ explained the visitor. ‘Twenty years in bottle at least—did I say at most? and plump.’
Here Margaret was about to beat a retreat, when the gentleman rose. ‘One moment, young lady,’ he said, ‘you do not know who I am. It will be something to tell your children’s children that James Boswell, of Auchinleck, Esq.’ (here he suited the action to the word) ‘chucked you under the chin.’
William Henry felt greatly inclined to resent this liberty, but Mr. Erin only smiled approval.
‘Another glass!’ said Mr. Boswell, and proceeded with his investigations.
Presently, without a word of warning, he threw himself on his knees and pressed his lips to the MS.
‘I kiss these invaluable relics of our bard,’ he said, ‘and thank Heaven that I have lived to see them. Would that my late revered friend, the great Lexi—the great Lexicog—— ‘ Emotion of various kinds prevented his completion of the sentence, and Mr. Erin led him with a gentle violence to the table on which lay the list of signatures; to which he added his name, though, it must be confessed, in a handwriting that was rather illegible.
THE members of the little household in Norfolk Street were now in great content. That word, indeed, scarcely describes the state of mind of the head of the house, who was literally transported with joy. It was difficult to identify the jubilant and triumphant old fellow with the grudging, smileless, and to say truth, somewhat morose individual he had been a few months before. His regard for William Henry began to be quite troublesome, for, though he had not the least objection to Margaret and his son being alone together, he would often interrupt their little interviews from excess of solicitude upon his account. That somewhat flippant young gentleman used to compare his parent on these occasions to the ‘sweete chickenne’ of the Shakespearean profession, which was always ‘hoverrynge over herre broode,’ and, indeed, this affectionate anxiety was partly due to a certain apprehension the old gentleman experienced when the goose that laid the golden eggs for him was out of his sight. At present, however, as Margaret reminded her cousin, there were not enough of them—though so far as they went they had a very material value—to become nest eggs; they could not be considered as savings or capital to any appreciable extent. They were not, indeed, theirs at all, having been made over to Mr. Erin; but for the object the young people had in view that was all one as though they had remained their own. If a play of Shakespeare’s, or even part of a play, should chance to turn up among those treasures of the Temple, that would indeed be a fortune to them, or at all events would procure the antiquary’s consent to everything, and ensure his favour in perpetuity.