"

"Cholery can't scratch through a half-inch bulkhead," said the partner.

"Sounds kin. Funny what little bits o' ones kin. An' the sawt o' keen,
soft way he hollas an' cusses through his sot teeth an' whines an' yaps
into his piller--why, he's suffered enough by now to be dead five times
over."

"That sufferin', that ain't the peggin'-out stage."

"No, I know that, an' I don't misdoubt but what he's a-goin' to git
well."

"Hmm!--sorry fo' that. What's goin' to kyore him?"

"His simon-pyo' cussedness! He's so chuck full of it--looks like it's
a-p'isonin' the p'ison o' the cholery."

"Pity!" said the partner.... "Humph! _Now_ what's up?"

To see what was up, Watson rose and looked down. On the roof below,
evidently having come there for privacy, were the commodore, the
senator, and Hugh. Watson loitered from the pilot-house and disappeared.

Down on the roof the commodore and the senator conversed across Hugh's
front. The statesman, with heavy "dear sirs" and heavier smiles, was
buttonholing the elder Courteney, who at every least pause affably
endeavored to refer him to Hugh. The grandson's turn to speak seemed not
to have arrived. The senator was trying to keep it from arriving and
Hugh was glum. Hence it may be doubted if the senator's cigar was really
cocked as high, or that his silk hat was as dingy, his very good teeth
as yellow, his cheeks as hard, or his forehead as knotty as they
appeared to Hugh, or that his tone of superiority, so overbearing last
night, so ingratiating to-day, was any worse for the change. Hugh was
biassed--felt bias and anger as an encumbering and untimely weight. In
self-depreciating contrast he recalled a certain young lady's airy,
winning way--airy way of winning--and coveted it for himself here and
now: a wrestler's nimble art of overcoming weight by lightness; of
lifting a heavy antagonist off his feet into thin air where his
heaviness would be against him. His small, trim grandfather had it, in
good degree; was using it now. Would it were his own in this issue,
where the senator held in his hand the folded petition, having already
vainly proffered it to the commodore, who had as vainly motioned him to
hand it to Hugh. Would the art were his! But he felt quite helpless to
command it, lacking the joyous goodness of heart which in the young lady
so irresistibly redeemed what the senator, the bishop, and the judge's
sister, to themselves, called her amazing--and the Gilmores to