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"What can we do?" asked Peggy, in the most plaintive voice, as the feeble "week! week!" of the little turkey was gasped out, more feebly every time. "Give it some whiskey-punch!" growled Peter, whose strict temperance principles were shocked by the remedies prescribed for Peggy's ague. "So I would," said Kate, demurely.
While our clothes were being dried, our hostess prepared dinner, which consisted of a boiled chicken, eggs, and fried ham, which we found excellent, and, as a preventive against catching cold, after the soaking we had got, I ordered some whiskey-punch, which I have always found very efficacious on such occasions.
Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired mine host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey-punch, which was speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom, a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr.
Peter was a good-natured slob of a fellow, much more addicted to wrestling, dancing, and love-making, than to hard work, and fonder of whiskey-punch than good advice. Upon one point both agreed, that being unfitted by the peculiar bias of his genius for work, he was to acquire the immense fortune to which his merits entitled him by means of a pure run of good luck.
But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were woefully disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey-punch which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer.
"Ho! standard-bearer!" the Prince concluded, "fling out my oriflamme. Noble gents of France, your King is among you to-day!" Then turning to the Prince of Ballybunion, who had been drinking whiskey-punch all night with the Princes of Donegal and Connemara, "Prince," he said, "the Irish Brigade has won every battle in the French history we will not deprive you of the honor of winning this.
I go fifty miles out of my way to tell him the news and give him the newspaper; for he knows now that his old master, Vivian, is a Cumberland man, a Caxton. Poor Will-o'-the-Wisp! The tea that night tasted uncommonly like whiskey-punch!
"You're not angry with me, father?" came from his innocent lips. "Oh, no, my child! Why should I be angry?" replied Mr. Green, kissing the cheek of his boy. Then the sunshine came back again to Henry's heart, and he was happy as before. Mrs. Green made the herb-tea for her husband, and it proved quite as good for him as the whiskey-punch.
But at this there were present only "Jephson, MacShaughnassy, and Self"; and of Brown's name I find henceforth no further trace. On Christmas eve we three met again, and my notes inform me that MacShaughnassy brewed some whiskey-punch, according to a recipe of his own, a record suggestive of a sad Christmas for all three of us.
He frequently invited himself when his entertainers had forgotten to do so; he dropped in accidentally upon small drinking parties of his acquaintance in public houses, and entertained them with stories, queer or terrible, from his inexhaustible reservoir, never scrupling to accept an acknowledgment in the shape of hot whiskey-punch, or whatever else was going.
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