u write that?"

"Beck did, and I signed it; for I 've got the gout or the rheumatism in
these knuckles that makes writing tough work for me, and tougher for the
man it's meant for. What servants they are in this house!--no answer to
the bell."

"And what reply did they make you?" asked Maitland.

"They shoved me on the retired list; and Curtis, the Secretary, said,
'I had to suppress your letter, or my Lords would certainly have struck
your name off the Navy List,'--a thing I defy them to do; a thing the
Queen could n't do!"

"Will you try one of these?" said Maitland, opening his cigar-case;
"these are stronger than the pale ones."

"No; I can't smoke without something to drink, which I foresee I shall
not have here."

"I deplore my inhospitality."

"Inhospitality! why, you have nothing to say to it. It is old mother
Maxwell receives us all here. You can be neither hospitable nor
inhospitable, so far as I see, excepting, perhaps, letting me see a
little more of that fire than you have done hitherto, peacocking out the
tail of your dressing-gown in front of me."

"Pray draw closer," said Maitland, moving to one side; "make yourself
perfectly at home here."

"So I used to be, scores of times, in these very rooms. It's more than
five-and-twenty years that I ever occupied any others."

"I was thinking of going back to the drawing-room for a cup of tea
before I resumed my work here."

"Tea! don't destroy your stomach with tea. Get a little gin,--they 've
wonderful gin here; I take a glass of it every night Beck mixes it, and
puts a sprig of, not mint, but marjoram, I think they call it I 'll make
her mix a brew for you; and, by the way, that brings me to what I came
about."

"Was it to recommend me to take gin?" asked Maitland, with a
well-assumed innocence.

"No, sir; not to recommend you to take gin," said the old Commodore,
sternly. "I told you when I came in that I had come on an errand of some
importance."

"If you did, it has escaped me."

"Well, you sha'n't escape me; that's all."

"I hope I misunderstand you. I trust sincerely that it is to the dryness
of your throat and the state of your tonsils that I must attribute this
speech. Will you do me the very great favor to recall it?"

The old man fidgeted in his chair, buttoned his coat, and unbuttoned it,
and then blurted out in an abrupt spasmodic way, "All right,--I did n't
mean offence--I intended to say that as we were here now--that as we