Read "Our Admirable Betty" by Jeffery Farnol online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Seldom or never, in all its length of days, had the great dining room of the ancient hostelry of the "George and Dragon" glowed with such sartorial splendour or known such an elegant posturing of silk-clad legs, such a flirting of ruffles, such a whirl of full-skirted coats; coats, these, of velvet, of worked satin and rich brocade, coats of various colours from Sir Benjamin's pink and gold to Lord Alvaston's purple and silver; the light of many candles scintillated in jewelled cravat and shoe-buckle, shone upon crested buttons and on the glossy curls of huge periwigs, black, brown and gold. In the midst of this gorgeous company stood a short, stoutish gentleman, his booted legs wide apart, his sun-burned face nearly as red as his weatherbeaten service coat, a little man with a truculent eye.
"Od's my life, my lord Colonel! " exclaimed Sir Benjamin, wringing his hand, "I know not what propitious zephyr hath wafted George Cleeve into these Arcadian solitudes, but hem! being hither I do protest you shall this night sit the honoured guest of good-Fellowship, Bacchus and the Muses, shedding upon our poetical revels the -- the effulgence of your hem! your glories, gracing our company with, I say with the"