The young gentleman
invited and conducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced
him to the old knight his father, and to the old lady his mother,
and to the young lady his sister, and to a number of bold yeomen,
who were laying siege to beef, brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table,
and taking copious draughts of old October. A motto was inscribed
over the interior door,--
EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY:
an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrity
in obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell gave Sir Ralph a very cordial welcome,
and entertained him during supper with several of his best stories, enforced
with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed with a peg in the ribs;
a species of vivacious eloquence in which the; old gentleman excelled,
and which is supposed by many of that pleasant variety of the human spectes,
known by the name of choice fellows and comical dogs, to be the genuine
tangible shape of the cream of a good joke.
CHAPTER VI
What! shall we have incision? shall we embrew? Henry IV.
Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair
Alice Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire,
rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast.
They arrived on a village green, surrounded with cottages peeping
from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled.
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