When the tumbler was full, he set it down on the table, with an indicative bang, close to Valentine's plate.
"Just try a toothful of that to begin with," said Mat. "If you like it, say Yes; if you don't, say No; and I'll make it better next time."
"You are very kind, very kind indeed," answered Mr. Blyth, eyeing the tumbler by his side with some little confusion and hesitation; "but really, though I should be shocked to appear ungrateful, I'm afraid I must own--Zack, you ought to have told your friend--"
"So I did," said Zack, sipping his rum-and-water with infinite relish.
"The fact is, my dear sir," continued Valentine, "I have the most wretched head in the world for strong liquor of any kind--"
"Don't call it strong liquor," interposed Mat, emphatically tapping the rim of his guest's tumbler with his fore-finger.
"Perhaps," pursued Mr. Blyth, with a polite smile, "I ought to have said grog."
"Don't call it grog," retorted Mat, with two disputatious taps on the rim of the glass.
"Dear me!" asked Valentine, amazedly, "what is it then?"
"It's Squaw's Mixture," answered Mat, with three distinct taps of asseveration.
Mr. Blyth and Zack laughed, under the impression that their queer companion was joking with them. Mat looked steadily and sternly from one to the other; then repeated with the gruffest gravity--"I tell you, it's Squaw's Mixture."
"What a very curious name! how is it made?" asked Valentine.
"Enough Brandy to spile the Water. Enough Rum to spile the Brandy and Water. Enough Lemon to spile the Rum and Brandy and Water. Enough Sugar to spile everything. That's 'Squaw's Mixture,'" replied Mat with perfect calmness and deliberation.
Zack began to laugh uproariously. Mat became more inflexibly grave than ever. Mr. Blyth felt that he was growing interested on the subject of the Squaw's Mixture. He stirred it diffidently with his spoon, and asked with great curiosity how his host first learnt to make it.
"When I was out, over there, in the Nor'-West," began Mat, nodding towards the particular point of the compass that he mentioned.
"When he says Nor'-West, and wags his addled old head like that at the chimney-pots over the way, he means North America," Zack explained.
"When I was out Nor'-West," repeated Mat, heedless of the interruption, "working along with the exploring gang, our stock of liquor fell short, and we had to make the best of it in the cold with a spirt of spirits and a pinch of sugar, drowned in more hot water than had ever got down the throat of e'er a man of the lot of us before. We christened the brew 'Squaw's Mixture,' because it was such weak stuff that even a woman couldn't have got drunk on it if she tried. Squaw means woman in those parts, you know; and Mixture means--what you've got afore you now. I knowed you couldn't stand regular grog, and that's why I cooked it up for you. Don't keep on stirring of it with a spoon like that, or you'll stir it away altogether. Try it."
"Let me try it--let's see how weak it is," cried Zack, reaching over to Valentine.
"Don't you go a-shoving of your oar into another man's rollocks," said Mat, dexterously knocking Zack's spoon out of his hand just as it touched Mr. Blyth's tumbler. "You stick to your grog; I'll stick to my grog; and he'll stick to Squaw's Mixture." With those words, Mat leant his bare elbows on the table, and watched Valentine's first experimental sip with great curiosity.
The result was not successful. When Mr. Blyth put down the tumbler, all the watery part of the Squaw's Mixture seemed to have got up into his eyes, and all the spirituous part to have stopped short at his lungs. He shook his head, coughed, and faintly exclaimed--"Too strong."
"Too hot you mean?" said Mat.
"No, indeed," pleaded poor Mr. Blyth, "I really meant too strong."
"Try again," suggested Zack, who was far advanced towards the bottom of his own tumbler already. "Try again. Your liquor all went the wrong way last time."
"More sugar," said Mat, neatly tossing two lumps into the glass from where he sat. "More lemon (squeezing one or two drops of juice, and three or four pips, into the mixture). More water (pouring in about a tea-spoonful, with a clumsy flourish of the kettle). Try again."
"Thank you, thank you a thousand times. Really, do you know, it tastes much nicer now," said Mr. Blyth, beginning cautiously with a spoonful of the squaw's mixture at a time.
Mat's spirits seemed to rise immensely at this announcement. He lit his pipe, and took up his glass of grog; nodded to Valentine and young Thorpe, just as he had nodded to the northwest point of the compass a minute or two before; muttered gruffly, "Here's all our good healths;" and finished half his liquor at a draught.
"All our good healths!" repeated Mr. Blyth, gallantly attacking the squaw's mixture this time without any intermediate assistance from the spoon.
"All our good healths!" chimed in Zack, draining his glass to the bottom. "Really, Mat, it's quite bewildering to see how your dormant social qualities are waking up, now you're plunged into the vortex of society. What do you say to giving a ball here next? You're just the man to get on with the ladies, if you could only be prevailed on to wear your coat, and give up airing your tawny old arms in public."
"Don't, my dear sir! I particularly beg you won't," cried Valentine, as Mat, apparently awakened to a sense of polite propriety by Zack's last hint, began to unroll one of his tightly-tucked-up shirt-sleeves. "Pray consult your own comfort, and keep your sleeves as they were--pray do! As an artist, I have been admiring your arms from the professional point of view ever since we first sat down to table. I never remember, in all my long experience of the living model, having met with such a splendid muscular development as yours."
Saying those words, Mr. Blyth waved his hand several times before his host's arms, regarding them with his eyes partially closed, and his head very much on one side, just as he was accustomed to look at his pictures. Mat stared, smoked vehemently, folded the objects of Valentine's admiration over his breast, and, modestly scratching his elbows, looked at young Thorpe with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Yes! decidedly the most magnificent muscular development I ever remember studying," reiterated Mr. Blyth, drumming with his fingers on the table, and concentrating the whole of his critical acumen in one eye by totally closing the other.
"Hang it, Blyth!" remonstrated Zack, "don't keep on looking at his arms as if they were a couple of bits of prize beef! You may talk about his muscular development as much as you please, but you can't have the smallest notion of what it's really equal to till you try it. I say, old Rough-and-Tough! jump up, and show him how strong you are. Just lift him on your toe, like you did me. (Here Zack pulled Mat unceremoniously out of his chair.) Come along, Blyth! Get opposite to him--give him hold of your hand--stand on the toe part of his right foot--don't wriggle about--stiffen your hand and aim, and--there!--what do you say to his muscular development now?" concluded Zack, with an air of supreme triumph, as Mat slowly lifted from the ground the foot on which Mr.