"My grandfather," said the banjo, "drank 'dog's-nose,' my father drank
'dog's-nose,' and I drink 'dog's-nose.' If that ain't heredity, there's
no virtue in the board schools."
"Ah!" said the piccolo, "you're always a-boasting of your science. And
so, I suppose, your son'll drink 'dog's-nose,' too?"
"No," retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, like wind in the
bung-hole of an empty cask; "for I ain't got none. The family ends with
me; which is a pity, for I'm a full-stop to be proud on."
He was an enormous, tun-bellied person--a mere mound of expressionless
flesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividend
of laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face was
blackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum.
There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room,
with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beams
reeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water.
"How much could you put down of a night, Jack?" said a little grinning
man by the door.
"Why," said the banjo, "enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked."
"Could you, now?" said the little man.
"Ah!" said the banjo, chuckling. "There's nothing like settin' one sperit
to lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity."
"What! Don't you go for to say you ever see'd a ghost!"
"Haven't I? What are you whisperin' about, you blushful chap there by the
winder?"
"I was only remarking sir, 'twere snawin' like the devil."
"_Is_ it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred and
ninety odd years."
"But _did_ you ever see a ghost?" said the little grinning man, pursuing
his subject.
"No, I didn't, sir," mimicked the banjo, "saving in coffee grounds. But
my grandfather in _his_ cups see'd one; which brings us to number three
in the matter of heredity."
"Give us the story, Jack," said the "bones," whose agued shins were
extemporizing a rattle on their own account before the fire.
"Well, I don't mind," said the fat man. "It's seasonable; and I'm
seasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandy
you set about me, the richer and headier I'll go down."
"You'd be a jolly old pudden to digest," said the piccolo.
"You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops,"
said his friend.
He drew critically at his "churchwarden" a moment or so, leaned forward,
emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving his
stomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded as
follows:--
"Music and malt is my nat'ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his
'dog's-nose,' and drank his clarinet like a artist and my father--"
"What did you say your grandfather did?" asked the piccolo.
"He played the clarinet."
"You said he blew his 'dog's-nose.'"
"Don't be a ass, Fred!" said the banjo, aggrieved. "How the blazes could
a man blow his dog's nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, and
then twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my father
played the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerly
genial to him. Amongst us we've piped out a good long century--ah! we
have, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat."
"What!" said the little man by the door. "You don't include them cockt
hatses in your expeerunce?"
"My grandfather wore 'em, sir. He wore a play-actin' coat, too, and
buckles to his shoes, when he'd got any; and he and a friend or two made
a permanency of 'waits' (only they called 'em according to the season),
and got their profit goin' from house to house, principally in the
country, and discoursin' music at the low rate of whatever they could get
for it."
"Ain't you comin' to the ghost, Jack?" said the little man hungrily.
"All in course, sir. Well, gentlemen, it was hard times pretty often with
my grandfather and his friends, as you may suppose; and never so much
as when they had to trudge it across country, with the nor'-easter
buzzin' in their teeth and the snow piled on their cockt hats like lemon
sponge on entry dishes. The rewards, I've heard him say--for he lived to
be ninety, nevertheless--was poor compensation for the drifts, and the
inflienza, and the broken chilblains; but now and again they'd get a fair
skinful of liquor from a jolly squire, as 'd set 'em up like boggarts
mended wi' new broomsticks."
"Ho-haw!" broke in a hurdle-maker in a corner; and then, regretting the
publicity of his merriment, put his fingers bashfully to his stubble
lips.
"Now," said the banjo, "it's of a pertikler night and a pertikler skinful
that I'm a-going to tell you; and that night fell dark, and that skinful
were took a hundred years ago this December, as I'm a Jack-pudden!"