Hide and Seek

'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. Blyth was standing, and, steadying himself on his left leg, raised the astonished painter with his right nearly two feet high in the air.

Any spectator observing the performance of this feat of strength, and looking only at Mat, might well have thought it impossible that any human being could present a more comical aspect than he now exhibited, with his black skull-cap pushed a little on one side, and showing an inch or so of his bald head, with his grimly-grinning face empurpled by the violent physical exertion of the moment, and with his thick heavy figure ridiculously perched on one leg. Mr. Blyth, however, was beyond all comparison the more laughable object of the two, as he soared nervously into the air on Mat's foot, tottering infirmly in the strong grasp that supported him, till he seemed to be trembling all over, from the tips of his crisp black hair to the flying tails of his frock-coat. As for the expression of his round rosy face, with the bright eyes fixed in a startled stare, and the plump cheeks crumpled up by an uneasy smile, it was so exquisitely absurd, as young Thorpe saw it over his fellow-lodger's black skull-cap, that he roared again with laughter. 'Oh! look up at him!' cried Zack, falling back in his chair. 'Look at his face, for heaven's sake, before you put him down!'

But Mat was not to be moved by this appeal. All the attention his eyes could spare during those few moments, was devoted, not to Mr. Blyth's face but to Mr. Blyth's watch-chain. There hung the bright little key of the painter's bureau, dangling jauntily to and fro over his waistcoat-pocket. As the right foot of the Sampson of Kirk Street hoisted him up slowly, the key swung temptingly backwards and forwards between them. 'Come take me! come take me!' it seemed to say, as Mat's eyes fixed greedily on it every time it dangled towards him.

'Wonderful! wonderful!' cried Mr. Blyth, looking excessively relieved when he found himself safely set down on the floor again.

'That's nothing to some of the things he can do,' said Zack. 'Look here! Put yourself stomach downwards on the carpet; and if you think the waistband of your trousers will stand it, he'll take you up in his teeth.'

'Thank you, Zack, I'm perfectly satisfied without risking the waistband of my trousers,' rejoined Valentine, returning in a great hurry to the table.

'The grog's getting cold,' grumbled Mat. 'Do you find it slip down easy now?' he continued, handing the squaw's mixture in the friendliest manner to Mr. Blyth.

'Astonishingly easy!' answered Valentine, drinking this time almost with the boldness of Zack himself. 'Now it's