t a day or two,
when the curd melts into oil, and the fish becomes richer and more
luscious. The more judicious gastronomes eat no other sauce than a
spoonful of the water in which the salmon is boiled, together with a
little pepper and vinegar.

CHAPTER XIII.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

_Evans._ I pray you now, good Master Slender's serving-man, and
friend Simple by your name, which way have you looked for Master
Caius?

_Slender._ Marry, sir, the City-ward, the Park-ward, every way; Old
Windsor way, and every way.

_Merry Wives of Windsor._

Sir Bingo Binks received the Captain's communication with the same
dogged sullenness he had displayed at sending the challenge; a most
ungracious _humph_, ascending, as it were, from the very bottom of his
stomach, through the folds of a Belcher handkerchief, intimating his
acquiescence, in a tone nearly as gracious as that with which the drowsy
traveller acknowledges the intimation of the slipshod ostler, that it is
on the stroke of five, and the horn will sound in a minute. Captain
MacTurk by no means considered this ejaculation as expressing a proper
estimate of his own trouble and services. "Humph?" he replied; "and what
does that mean, Sir Bingo? Have not I here had the trouble to put you
just into the neat road; and would you have been able to make a handsome
affair out of it at all, after you had let it hang so long in the wind,
if I had not taken on myself to make it agreeable to the gentleman, and
cooked as neat a mess out of it as I have seen a Frenchman do out of a
stale sprat?"

Sir Bingo saw it was necessary to mutter some intimation of acquiescence
and acknowledgment, which, however inarticulate, was sufficient to
satisfy the veteran, to whom the adjustment of a personal affair of this
kind was a labour of love, and who now, kindly mindful of his promise to
Tyrrel, hurried away as if he had been about the most charitable action
upon earth, to secure the attendance of some one as a witness on the
stranger's part.

Mr. Winterblossom was the person whom MacTurk had in his own mind
pitched upon as the fittest person to perform this act of benevolence,
and he lost no time in communicating his wish to that worthy gentleman.
But Mr. Winterblossom, though a man of the world, and well enough
acquainted with such matters, was by no means so passionately addicted
to them as was the man of peace, Captain Hector MacTurk. As a _bon
vivant_, he hated t