“You may depend upon it, sir,” said Frank, “that Caryl Carne will be greatly pleased to see you. And I think you will agree with me that a more straightforward and simple-minded man is not to be found in this country. He combines what we are pleased to call our national dignity and self-respect with the elegant manners, and fraternal warmth, and bonhomie--as they themselves express it--of our friends across the water.”
“You be off! I don't want to be cross any more. Two hundred thousand friends there at this moment eager to burn down our homes and cut our throats! Tired as I am, I ought to take a stick to you, as friend Tugwell did to his son for much less. I have the greatest mind not to go near that young man. I wish I had Twemlow here to talk it over. Pay your fine for a French word, and be off!”
Frank Darling gravely laid down five shillings on his dessert plate, and walked off. The fine for a French word in that house, and in hundreds of other English houses at this patriotic period, was a crown for a gentleman, and a shilling for a lady, the latter not being liable except when gentlemen were present. The poet knew well that another word on his part would irritate his father to such a degree that no visit would be paid to-morrow to the admirer of the Harmodiad, whose admiration he was longing to reward with a series of good dinners. And so he did his utmost to ensure his father's visit.
But when the Admiral, going warily--because he was so stiff from saddle-work--made his way down to the house of Widow Shanks, and winking at the Royal Arms in the lower front window, where Stubbard kept Office and convenience, knocked with the knocker at the private door, there seemed to be a great deal of thought required before anybody came to answer.
“Susie,” said the visitor, who had an especial knack of remembering Christian names, which endeared him to the bearers, “I am come to see Mr. Carne, and I hope he is at home.”
“No, that 'a bain't, sir,” the little girl made answer, after looking at the Admiral as if he was an elephant, and wiping her nose with unwonted diligence; “he be gone away, sir; and please, sir, mother said so.”
“Well, here's a penny for you, my dear, because you are the best little needle-woman in the school, they tell me. Run and tell your mother to come and see me.--Oh, Mrs. Shanks, I am very glad to see you, and so blooming in spite of all your hard work. Ah, it is no easy thing in these hard times to maintain a large family and keep the pot boiling. And everything clean as a quarter-deck! My certy, you are a woman in a thousand!”