That supper would have been a right pleasant meal but for one thing. The room was gay with vine-leaves, green boughs, and bunches of roses in jars and vases. Never had I seen it so gracefully decked, and I knew whose handiwork it was. My aunt had skill in providing, as the table bore witness, set out with well-cooked poultry, tench, salmon, plovers' eggs, dainty tarts, and amber-coloured ale and French and Spanish wine, but the adornment of the table and the room was new and strange. When the doctor and I entered the room, "my Lord Arrogance" stood at the other end, bending reverentially to listen to the vicar's talk, He made his bow to the doctor, and we took our seats--Sheffield at Mrs. Graves' right hand, Mistress Goel next him, the doctor and I on the other side of the table.
Sheffield talked with the Goels of Brederoo's _Farce of the Cow_, and of some tragedy by Vondel. He applauded the genius and enterprise of Doctor Samuel Coster, and praised to the skies the Sisters Roemer Visscher. It was in listening to this conversation that I discovered how intimate Mistress Goel was with those learned and beautiful ladies. The playwrights and poets of Amsterdam and Leyden were quite unknown to me, and to the vicar and my aunt; but Sheffield contrived to interest Mrs. Graves by condescending to explain to her, and appealing to her taste and judgment, and he pleased his host by a sentence now and then in which he implied that these topics were far beneath the altitude of his sacred learning. I imagined that Sheffield designed to expose my clownish ignorance in contrast with his knowledge of the literature of the Netherlands; but his evident anxiety to keep the direction of the conversation in his own hands, and an exchange of glances between father and daughter, as if some remark of his tickled them to the point of laughter, made me aware that his lordship did but repeat a lesson with which he had been stuffed for the occasion. In a little time he had taken a good deal of wine, and then he did me the honour to become aware of my presence.
"I' faith," said he, "'tis uncourteous to Vavasour to talk only of divine poesy. Does line fetch a good price this year?"
The inquiry was addressed to me, but before I could answer, Mistress Goel shot me a question--