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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Corporal, therefore, with a reluctant sigh, renounced the friendly offer, and after lying awake three nights, and turning over in his own mind the characters, consciences, and capabilities of all his neighbours, he came at last to the conviction that there was no one with whom he could so safely entrust his cat as Peter Dealtry.
"I! your honour's too good; and indeed, though I say it, Sir, you might do worse; not but what I should be sorry to leave nice snug home here, and this stream, though the trout have been shy lately, ah! that was a mistake of yours, Sir, recommending the minnow; and neighbour Dealtry, though his ale's not so good at 'twas last year; and and but, in short, I always loved your honour dandled you on my knees; You recollect the broadsword exercise? one, two, three augh! baugh! and if your honour really is going, why rather than you should want a proper person who knows the world, to brush your coat, polish your shoes, give you good advice on the faith of a man, I'll go with you myself!"
"Contented! a suitable fate for the old dog But Peter Dealtry?" "Of Peter Dealtry know we nothing more, save that we have seen at Grassdale church-yard, a small tombstone inscribed to his memory, with the following sacred poesy thereto appended, "'We flourish, saith the holy text One hour, and are cut down the next: I was like grass but yesterday, But Death has mowed me into hay."
Dealtry's hat was off in an instant, the stiff Corporal rose like a musquet; the Stranger would have kept his seat, but Dealtry gave him an admonitory tug by the collar; accordingly he rose, muttering a hasty oath, which certainly died on his lips when he saw the cause which had thus constrained him into courtesy.
One evening Aram and Madeline were passing through the village in their accustomed walk, when Peter Dealtry sallied forth from The Spotted Dog, and hurried up to the lovers with a countenance full of importance, and a little ruffled by fear.
Nothing on earth so offended the perpendicular Jacob Bunting, as any insinuation of increasing years or growing infirmities; but at this moment, as he meditated putting Dealtry to some use, he prudently conquered the gathering anger, and added, like the man of the world he justly plumed himself on being in a voice gentle as a dying howl, "What 'fraid on? come in, there's good fellow, want to speak to ye.
Goody Solomon sold beer in opposition to you, set up a public; you do not like Goody Solomons, Peter Dealtry?" "If that were all Jacobina had done!" said the landlord, grinning. "All! what else did she do? Why she eat up John Tomkins's canary-bird; and did not John Tomkins, saucy rascal, say you could not sing better nor a raven?"
"Not now," answered the Traveller; then, turning round to Dealtry, he said: "Are you landlord here?" "At your service," said Peter, with the indifference of a man well to do, and not ambitious of halfpence. "Come, then, quick budge," said the Traveller, tapping him on the back: "bring more glasses another jug of the October; and any thing or every thing your larder is able to produce d'ye hear?"
His hat was fastened tight on his brows by a blue pocket-handkerchief; he wore a spencer of a light brown drugget, a world too loose, above a leather jerkin; his breeches of corduroy, were met all of a sudden half way up the thigh, by a detachment of Hessians, formerly in the service of the Corporal, and bought some time since by Peter Dealtry to wear when employed in shooting snipes for the Squire, to whom he occasionally performed the office of game-keeper; suspended round his wrist by a bit of black ribbon, was his constable's baton; he shouldered his musket gallantly, and he carried his person as erect as if the least deflexion from its perpendicularity were to cost him his life.
He had not been a week returned, and to this part of his native country he had hastened at once. He checked his horse as he now past the memorable sign, that yet swung before the door of Peter Dealtry; and there, under the shade of the broad tree, now budding into all its tenderest verdure, a pedestrian wayfarer sate enjoying the rest and coolness of his shelter.
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