I'd sooner
have the hangman for a bosom friend than a man who is likely to whimper
on the day of reckoning. Did I tell you that a reverend bishop offered
me fifty guineas for my mare the other day?"
"You sold her?" came the question in chorus.
"Sold her! No! I told him that she would be of little use to him, since
no one but myself could get her up to a coach."
"Your impudence will be the death of you, John," laughed the landlady.
"That seems a fairly safe prophecy," answered Gentleman Jack--for so his
companions named him--"still, I've heard of one bishop who took to the
road in his leisure hours. He died of a sudden fever, it was said; but,
for all that, he returned one night from a lonely ride across Hounslow
Heath, and was most anxious to conceal the fact that somebody had put a
bullet into him. My bishop may have become ambitious--indeed, I think he
had, for he had intellect enough to understand my meaning and was not in
the least scandalised."
"Then we may yet welcome him at the 'Punch-Bowl,'" said one man. "So
far, this house has entertained no one higher in the church than a Fleet
parson. I see no sin in drinking the bishop's good health and wishing
him the speedy possession of a horse to match his ambition.
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