Monsieur
Veelkeenson was the white-haired boy at that table, and he felt it,
yielded to the full satisfaction of it. He had dined royally, and was
fit for anything. When his friend asked him if he would go fishing, he
replied jauntily, and in a way quite unlike himself: "Why, suttenly,
which would you rather do or go fishin'?"
"O Wilks," cried the lawyer, "you're a patent pressed brick! I feel like
old Isaac Walton's Coridon, that said, d'ye mind, 'Come, hostess, give
us more ale, and let's drink to him,' which is natural, seeing I'm
called Corry."
The companions had a glass of ale after dinner, which was quite
indefensible, for they had had a sufficiency at that bounteous repast.
Evidently, the dominie was in for a good time. A wizened old fellow,
named Batiste, with a permanent crick in his back, dug the worms, and
presented them to the lawyer in an empty lobster tin, the outside of
which was covered with texts of Scripture. "It seems almost profane,"
remarked the recipient, "to carry worms inside so much Bible language."
But the merry schoolmaster remarked that it was turn about, for he had
heard a Scotch preacher, who seemed to know the whole Bible by heart,
say in prayer, on behalf of himself and his people, "we are all poor
wurrums of the airth.
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