lend a hand: whip hard, my lads.
It's once in three years, hurrah! and the cause is a cruel woman. Toast
her; but no name. Here's to the nameless Fair! For it's not my intention
to marry, says she, and, ma'am, I'm a man of honour or I'd catch you
tight, my nut-brown maid, and clap you into a cage, fal-lal, like a
squirrel; to trot the wheel of mat-trimony. Shame to the first man down!'

'That won't be I,' said Temple.

'Be me, sir, me,' the captain corrected his grammar.

'Pardon me, Captain Bulsted; the verb "To be" governs the nominative case
in our climate,' said Temple.

'Then I'm nominative hic . . . I say, sir, I'm in the tropics, Mr. Tem
. . . Mr. Tempus. Point of honour, not forget a man's name. Rippenger,
your schoolmaster? Mr. Rippenger, you've knocked some knowledge into this
young gentleman.' Temple and I took counsel together hastily; we cried in
a breath: 'Here 's to Julia Rippenger, the prettiest, nicest girl
living!' and we drank to her.

'Julia!' the captain echoed us. 'I join your toast, gentlemen. Mr.
Richmond, Mr. Tempus-Julia! By all that's holy, she floats a sinking
ship! Julia consoles me for the fairest, cruellest woman alive. A rough
sailor, Julia! at your feet.'

The captain fell commendably forward. Squire Gregory had already dropped.
Temple and I tried to meet, but did not accomplish it till next morning
at breakfast. A couple of footmen carried us each upstairs in turn, as if
they were removing furniture.

Out of this strange evening came my discovery of my father, and the
captain's winning of a wife.

CHAPTER X

AN EXPEDITION

I wondered audibly where the Bench was when Temple and I sat together
alone at Squire Gregory's breakfast-table next morning, very thirsty for
tea. He said it was a place in London, but did not add the sort of place,
only that I should soon be coming to London with him; and I remarked,
'Shall I?' and smiled at him, as if in a fit of careless affection. Then
he talked runningly of the theatres and pantomimes and London's charms.

The fear I had of this Bench made me passingly conscious of Temple's
delicacy in not repeating its name, though why I feared it there was
nothing to tell me. I must have dreamed of it just before waking, and I
burned for reasonable information concerning it. Temple respected my
father too much to speak out the extent of his knowledge on the subject,
so we drank our tea with the grandeur of London for our theme, where,
Templ