"Wait until the meal is over," Drusilla heard him say; "wait and you shall see him taking tobacco. 'Tis a wonderous sight, my masters. I have seen him at it with mine own eyes. He can blow the smoke out through his nostrils in two long tubes, or drink it down into his inside as one might drink a cup of malmsey. Ay, 'tis a marvellous habit, is it not, Christopher Pym?"
He glanced across the table at a pale, abstracted-looking man, with straight black hair and lack-lustre eyes. Christopher Pym seemed to feel himself out of place among these his table companions, for in spite of his threadbare cloak and his ragged wristbands he was still a ripe scholar and a born gentleman. He smiled faintly and answered:
"Ay, truly, Master Hawksworth, 'tis a marvellous habit--marvellous in that it is indulged in by gentlefolk. For my own part, I like it not. As well might you make a chimney of your throat at once, and call in the chimney-sweep o' mornings to sweep out the black soot."
"'Tis plain to see that thou hast never tried it," remarked Hawksworth. "But after all, 'twas never intended for poor schoolmasters."
Christopher Pym quietly broke off a few crumbs from his piece of bread, and holding them in his thin fingers proceeded slowly to cleanse his platter.
"No," he said with another faint smile. "There be few such luxuries that a poor tutor can afford out of five marks a year. But I am well content to live without the vile herb and let others take it who may."
"'Tis a right gentlemanly accomplishment, I warrant you," pursued Hawksworth; "ay, and one which may gain a man great fame if he but exercise it with skill. Look at young Sir Anthony Killigrew, for example; he hath made himself famous in Plymouth by his skill, for he can not only blow the smoke from his nose, but he hath performed a much more wondrous trick; for on a day in last week he took three long whiffs from his tobacco-pipe, drank three cups of canary on the top of them, then took horse, and brought forth the smoke, one whiff at Burrington, the second at Bickley, and the third at Tamerton. 'Twas he who first taught Master Gilbert Oglander to drink tobacco, although 'tis true the lad misliked it and hath since abandoned it."