Whatever happened, they sat down at table together, and the point of honour for them each and every was, not to be first to rise from it.

Once more the pure Briton and the mixed if not fused English engaged, Bacchus for instrument this time, Bacchus for arbiter of the fray.
You may imagine! says the Dame.

She cites the old butler at Esslemont, 'as having been much questioned on the subject by her family relative, Dr.Glossop, and others interested to know the smallest items of the facts,'-- and he is her authority for the declaration that the Welsh gentlemen and the English gentlemen, 'whatever their united number,' consumed the number of nine dozen and a half of old Esslemont wine before they rose, or as possibly sank, at the festive board at the hour of five of the morning.
Years later, this butler, Joshua Queeney, 'a much enfeebled old man,' retold and enlarged the tale of the enormous consumption of his best wine; with a sacred oath to confirm it, and a tear expressive of elegiacal feelings.
'They bled me twelve dozen, not a bottle less,' she quotes him, after a minute description of his countenance and scrupulously brushed black suit, pensioner though he had become.

He had grown, during the interval, to be more communicative as to particulars.

The wines were four.