an empty glass.
All drank equally. Often the voices were high, the talk was loud. The
gentlemen were too serious to sing.

At one moment of the evening Queeney confidently anticipated a
'fracassy,' he said. One of the foreign party--and they all spoke
English, after five dozen bottles had gone the round, as correct as the
English themselves--remarked on the seventy-years Old Brown Sherry, that
'it had a Madeira flavour.' He spoke it approvingly. Thereupon Lord Simon
Pitscrew calls to Queeney, asking him 'why Madeira had been supplied
instead of Esslemont's renowned old Sherry?' A second Welsh gentleman
gave his assurances that his friend had not said it was Madeira. But Lord
Brailstone accused them of the worse unkindness to a venerable Old Brown
Sherry, in attributing a Madeira flavour to it. Then another Welsh
gentleman briskly and emphatically stated his opinion, that the
attribution of Madeira flavour to it was a compliment. At this, which
smelt strongly, he said, of insult, Captain Abrane called on the name of
their absent host to warrant the demand of an apology to the Old Brown
Sherry, for the imputation denying it an individual distinction. Chumley
Potts offered generally to bet that he would distinguish blindfold at a
single sip any Madeira from any first-class Sherry, Old Brown or Pale.
'Single sip or smell!' Ambrose Mallard cried, either for himself or his
comrade, Queeney could not say which.

Of all Lord Fleetwood's following, Mr. Potts and Mr. Mallard were, the
Dame informs us, Queeney's favourites, because they were so genial; and
he remembered most of what they said and did, being moved to it by 'poor
young Mr. Mallard's melancholy end and Mr. Potts's grief!'

The Welsh gentlemen, after paying their devoirs to the countess next
morning, rode on in fresh health and spirits at mid-day to Barlings, the
seat of Mr. Mason Fennell, a friend of Mr. Owain Wythan's. They shouted,
in an unseemly way, Queeney thought, at their breakfast-table, to hear
that three of the English party, namely, Captain Abrane, Mr. Mallard, and
Mr. Potts, had rung for tea and toast in bed. Lord Simon Pitscrew, Lord
Brailstone, and the rest of the English were sore about it; for it
certainly wore a look of constitutional inferiority on the English side,
which could boast of indubitably stouter muscles. The frenzied spirits of
the Welsh gentlemen, when riding off, let it be known what their opinion
was. Under the protection of the cou