o look genteel-like. Wears top-boots for to hide his cloven
feet, sir, and carries a fine tail under his arm with a fluke at the end
of it, same as that on a sheet-anchor--ah, yer knows the gent I means,
sir!

"Well, yezsir, old Sir Titus wer him all over and must ha' been his
twin-brother; barring the tail, the admiral being shaky about the feet,
too, and his boots a'most as big as the dinghy of that sloop. They wos
like as two peas, sir, old Nick and he!

"Lord-sakes, though, yer must have heerd tell of him, sir, a young and
gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him
and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he
were a-spyin' round the gates?"

"No, waiter, I never heard the old gentleman's name before you told it
me," I replied, curious to learn some further disclosures concerning so
celebrated a character. "What was this story?"

"W'y, sir, it's enuff a'most for to make a cat laugh, sir," he said with
a snigger, which he immediately flicked away, as it were, with his
napkin, resuming his whilom solemn demeanour. "It happen'd, if yer must
know, sir, in this way, sir, yezsir.

"Old Blazes--that wer the name he allers went by in the yard--was
a-hangin' round the main gate a-lookin' out for to see who comes along,
w'en all of a sudding he spies this good woman as was a-takin' in the
clothes from the wash for Admiralty House.

"That were where, yer knows, sir, he himself lived with Lady Fitz, close
by the College and jest to the right as yer goes in the yard?

"Lord-sakes, sir! The old admiral thinks he'd made a fine haul and that
the woman were a-smuggling in sperrits or somethin' `contraband,' as
they calls it, for the sailors who is allers stationed round the
commander-in-chief's office; and so, he orders her for to turn out her
big baskets there in the gateway afore all the grinning policemen and
men who was jest a-comin' into the yard.

"Ye never see such a show, sir in all yer born days; and the beauty on
it were that as he was in the middle of it sir, overhaulin' all the
things from the wash, and a-pokin' 'em about with his gold-headed stick
and turnin' over the ladies' fal-de-rals and all sorts of women's gear
that they don't like men for to see, sir, up comes Lady Fitzblazes
herself, a-going out for a walk.

"Seein' what he were after, she axes him wot he means by treating her
clothes like that there.

"Lord-sakes, sir, if he were old Nick, s