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Warm yellow wine of a peculiar musty flavour and sadly lacking in potency, was poured by attendants from pewter kettles into small wine-cups, to be tossed off in bumpers all round with great frequency, each guest immediately presenting his empty cup to the gaze of his neighbours to show that there had been no heel-taps.
I was glad to see Mrs. Ripley last Monday, and to hear from her the result of your Sunday meeting. I was a little sceptical, because I think permanent forms of worship spring from a very deep piety, and the pious persons whom I know I could count on my hands. Such themes are too good for heel-taps to a letter, and I shall wait the issue of your movement with a great deal of interest.
'May I burn if I ever played for a girl before! Hang it! man, look cheerful, We'll toast her first and a daintier bit never swam in a bowl and play for her afterwards! Come, no heel-taps, my lord. Drink her! Drink her! Here's to the Mistress of Bastwick! 'Lady Almeric Doyley! my lord cried, rising, and bowing with his hand to his heart, while he ogled the door through which she had disappeared.
If you are a staid old painter who takes life as he finds it, and who loves to watch the procession from the sidewalk without any desire to carry one of the banners or to blow one of the horns one of your three-meals-a-day, no heel-taps, and go-to-bed-at-ten-o'clock kind of a man, then make a note of the Cycle.
Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the greatest fortunes, and his Grace submits to take up with the heel-taps of Mr. Erskine.
The wine, too, goes merrily round; bumpers are drunk at short intervals, and the wine-cups are held upside down, to show that there are no heel-taps. This lively picture requires, perhaps, a little further explanation.
There were the lordly Schout and his obsequious deputy, the burgomasters with their officious schepens at their elbows, the subaltern officers at the elbows of the schepens, and so on, down to the lowest hanger-on of police; every tag having his rag at his side, to finish his pipe, drink off his heel-taps, and laugh at his flights of immortal dulness.
He clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Who's the right doctor now?" he asked cheerfully. "A drab of a housekeeper? or Father Schwartz? Your health, my jolly boy! When the bottle's empty, I'll help you to finish the flask. Drink away! and the devil take all heel-taps!" The next dose of brandy fired Jack's excitable brain with a new idea.
The Champagne did not prevent me from reflecting on the fact that he had not yet asked whether I loved him. The spirit chorus again floated through my mind: "Where lovers, Deep in thought, Give themselves for life." I was not allowed to give myself I was taken. "No heel-taps," he whispered, "to the bottom quaff." "Take me home, will you?" "Mrs. Bliss is not ready." "Tell her that I must go."
Iglesias and I were still northward bound. At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train, draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt.
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