[A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy]@TWC D-Link bookA Laodicean BOOK THE SECOND 85/88
What have you got ?' 'Only a little wine.' 'What wine ?' 'Do try it.
I call it "the blushful Hippocrene," that the poet describes as "Tasting of Flora and the country green; Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth."' De Stancy took the flask, and drank a little. 'It warms, does it not ?' said Dare. 'Too much,' said De Stancy with misgiving.
'I have been taken unawares. Why, it is three parts brandy, to my taste, you scamp!' Dare put away the wine.
'Now you are to see something,' he said. 'Something--what is it ?' Captain De Stancy regarded him with a puzzled look. 'It is quite a curiosity, and really worth seeing.
Now just look in here.' The speaker advanced to the back of the building, and withdrew the wood billet from the wall. 'Will, I believe you are up to some trick,' said De Stancy, not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these unsuggestive circumstances, and with a comfortable resignation, produced by the potent liquor, which would have been comical to an outsider, but which, to one who had known the history and relationship of the two speakers, would have worn a sadder significance.
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