"Birdie knows I don't drink," stammered our hired man, "but she thinks
I'd ought to take the pledge as an example."
"An example," echoed Ajax. "To whom? To _us?_"
"She said an example, gen'lemen, jest--an example."
"But she meant us," said Ajax sternly. "Our names were mentioned.
Don't you deny it, Jasperson."
"They was," he admitted reluctantly. "She as't me, careless-like, if
you didn't drink wine with your meals, and I said yes. I'd ought to
have said no."
"What!" cried my brother, smiting the table till the decanter and
glasses reeled. "You think that you ought to have lied on our account.
Jasperson--I'm ashamed of you; I tremble for your future as the slave
of Miss Dutton."
"Wal--I didn't lie," said Jasperson defiantly; "I up and told her the
truth: that you had beer for supper, and claret wine, or mebbe sherry
wine, or mebbe both for dinner, and that you took a toddy when you
felt like it, an' that there was champagne down cellar, an' foreign
liquors in queer bottles, an' Scotch whisky, an'--_everything_.
She as't questions and I answered them--like an idiot! Gen'lemen, the
shame you feel for me is discounted by the shame I feel for myself.
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