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I will come with pleasure, said Doctor Unonius, thrusting Homer back in his shelf. 'Wunnerful brandy, Sir John! said old Squire Morshead. He said this regularly as he dined at Penalune when, after dinner and wine and songs, the hour came for the 'brandy-mixing' before the guests dispersed. Sir John was a widower and confined his hospitality to men.
The night was moonless but strewn with stars. A tonic north-east wind hummed over the high moors, and seemed to prick old Dapple, prescient of his own straw and rack, to his very best trot. It was a penetrating wind, too; but Doctor Unonius, wrapped in his frieze coat, with the famous Penalune brandy playing about the cockles of his heart, defied its chill.
He had adored his wife and lost her young; and thereafter, though exquisitely courteous to ladies when he met them on the hunting-field, for example he could not endure one within the walls of Penalune.
While he stood by the bookcase, balancing his spectacles on his forefinger and Homer's words in his mind, Jenifer, his one small maid-servant, entered with word that Roger Olver was at the door with a message from Penalune. 'Show him in, said Doctor Unonius.
So Roger Olver, huntsman and handy-man to Sir John Penalune of Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple by the doctor's front door it would be hard to compute how many farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple and was conducted by Jenifer to the doctor's study. 'Ah!
The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the frosty air, 'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two, Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue, Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol
I have been dining at Penalune nay, madam, do not misunderstand me: I am as sober as a judge. On my homeward road I overtook a suspicious character, and certain evidence I managed to wrest from him leaves little doubt that robbery is intended here to-night, as it has actually been achieved elsewhere. The man, I should tell you a powerful fellow was dressed in woman's apparel.
Unless it were in the saddle, you could scarcely see him to better advantage than at this ceremony of brandy-mixing for a ceremony it was; no pushing of a decanter, but a slow solemn ladling by the host himself from an ample bowl. Moreover, the Penalune brandy was famous. 'It has lain, said he 'let me see thirty-five years in cellar, to my own knowledge.
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