"Just you step in now, and look to this venison. There's a breast! you may lay your two fingers into the say there, and not get to the bottom of the fat. That's Sir Richard's sending. He's all for them Leighs, and no wonder, they'm brave lads, surely; and there's a saddle-o-mutton! I rode twenty miles for mun yesterday, I did, over beyond Barnstaple; and five year old, Mr. John, it is, if ever five years was; and not a tooth to mun's head, for I looked to that; and smelt all the way home like any apple; and if it don't ate so soft as ever was scald cream, never you call me Thomas Burman."
"Humph!" said Jack. "And that's their dinner. Well, some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth."
"Some be born with roast beef in their mouths, and plum-pudding in their pocket to take away the taste o' mun; and that's better than empty spunes, eh?"
"For them that get it," said Jack. "But for them that don't"
And with a sigh he returned to his small ale, and then lingered in and out of the inn, watching the dinner as it went into the best room where the guests were assembled.
And as he lounged there, Amyas went in, and saw him, and held out his hand, and said—
"Hillo, Jack! how goes the world? How you've grown!" and passed on;—what had Jack Brimblecombe to do with Rose Salterne?
So Jack lingered on, hovering round the fragrant smell like a fly round a honey-pot, till he found himself invisibly attracted, and as it were led by the nose out of the passage into the adjoining room, and to that side of the room where there was a door; and once there he could not help hearing what passed inside; till Rose Salterne's name fell on his ear. So, as it was ordained, he was taken in the fact. And now behold him brought in red-hand to judgment, not without a kick or two from the wrathful foot of Amyas Leigh. Whereat there fell on him a storm of abuse, which, for the honor of that gallant company, I shall not give in detail; but which abuse, strange to say, seemed to have no effect on the impenitent and unabashed Jack, who, as soon as he could get his breath, made answer fiercely, amid much puffing and blowing.
"What business have I here? As much as any of you. If you had asked me in, I would have come: but as you didn't, I came without asking."
"You shameless rascal!" said Cary. "Come if you were asked, where there was good wine? I'll warrant you for that!"
"Why," said Amyas, "no lad ever had a cake at school but he would dog him up one street and down another all day for the crumbs, the trencher-scraping spaniel!"
"Patience, masters!" said Frank. "That Jack's is somewhat of a gnathonic and parasitic soul, or stomach, all Bideford apple-women know; but I suspect more than Deus Venter has brought him hither."
