CHAPTER XII.
A COLD DOUCHE ON A HOT FIT.
There lived at Plymouth, in a neat house at the back of the Hoe, and
not far from the Citadel, a certain Mr. Basket, a retired haberdasher
of Cheapside, upon whom the Major could count for a hospitable
welcome. The two had been friends--cronies almost--in their London
days; dining together daily at the same cook-shop, and as regularly
sharing after dinner a bottle of port to the health of King George
and Mr. Pitt. Nor, since their almost simultaneous retreat from the
capital, had they allowed distance to diminish their mutual regard.
They frequently corresponded, and their letters included many a
playful challenge to test one another's West Country hospitality.
Now while the Major had (to put it mildly) but exchanged one sphere
of activity for another, Mr. Basket, a married man, embraced the
repose of a contemplative life; cultivating a small garden and taking
his wife twice a week to the theatre, of which he was a devotee.
These punctual jaunts, very sensibly practised as a purge against
dullness, together with the stir and hubbub of a garrison town in
which his walled garden stood isolated, as it were, all day long,
amid marchings, countermarchings, bugle-calls, and the rumble of
wagons filled with material of war, gave him a sense of being in the
swim--of close participation in the world's affairs; failing which a
great many folk seem to miss half the enjoyment of doing nothing in
particular.
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