"My dear sir, I'm shocked to
see you taking all this trouble," exclaimed Mr. Blyth; "do pray let me
help you!" "No, I'm damned if I do," returned Mat with the most polite
suavity and the most perfect good humor. "Let him have all the trouble,
Blyth," said Zack; "let him help you, and don't pity him. He'll make up
for his hard work, I can tell you, when he sets in seriously to his
liver and bacon. Watch him when he begins--he bolts his dinner like the
lion in the Zoological Gardens."
Mat appeared to receive this speech of Zack's as a well-merited
compliment, for he chuckled at young Thorpe and winked grimly at
Valentine, as he sat down bare-armed to his own mess of liver and
bacon. It was certainly a rare and even a startling sight to see this
singular man eat. Lump by lump, without one intervening morsel of
bread, he tossed the meat into his mouth rather than put it
there--turned it apparently once round between his teeth--and then
voraciously and instantly swallowed it whole. By the time a quarter of
Mr. Blyth's plateful of liver and bacon, and half of Zack's had
disappeared, Mat had finished his frugal meal; had wiped his mouth on
the back of his hand, and the back of his hand on the leg of his
trousers; had mixed two glasses of strong hot rum-and-water for himself
and Zack; and had set to work on the composition of a third tumbler,
into which sugar, brandy, lemon-juice, rum, and hot water all seemed to
drop together in such incessant and confusing little driblets, that it
was impossible to tell which ingredient was uppermost in the whole
mixture.
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