ll your stores ready to clear out, and make yourself scarce
from this place."

"I understand you," said Henry; "We have become the subject of popular
rumour; I've only to beg of you, admiral, that you'll say nothing of
this to Flora; she has already suffered enough, Heaven knows; do not let
her have the additional infliction of thinking that her name is made
familiar in every pothouse in the town."

"Leave me alone for that," said the admiral. "Do you think I'm an ass?"

"Ay, ay," said Jack Pringle, who came in at that moment, and thought the
question was addressed to him.

"Who spoke to you, you bad-looking horse-marine?"

"Me a horse-marine! didn't you ask a plain question of a fellow, and get
a plain answer?"

"Why, you son of a bad looking gun, what do you mean by that? I tell you
what it is, Jack; I've let you come sneaking too often on the
quarter-deck, and now you come poking your fun at your officers, you
rascal!"

"I poking fun!" said Jack; "couldn't think of such a thing. I should
just as soon think of you making a joke as me."

"Now, I tell you what it is, I shall just strike you off the ship's
books, and you shall just go and cruise by yourself; I've done with
you."

"Go and tell that to the marines, if you like," said Jack. "I ain't done
with you yet, for a jolly long watch. Why, what do you suppose would
become of you, you great babby, without me? Ain't I always a conveying
you from place to place, and steering you through all sorts of
difficulties?"

"D---n your impudence!"

"Well, then, d---n yours."

"Shiver my timbers!"

"Ay, you may do what you like with your own timbers."

"And you won't leave me?"

"Sartingly not."

"Come here, then?"

Jack might have expected a gratuity, for he advanced with alacrity.

"There," said the admiral, as he laid his stick across his shoulders;
"that's your last month's wages; don't spend it all at once."

"Well, I'm d----d!" said Jack; "who'd have thought of that?--he's a
turning rumgumtious, and no mistake. Howsomdever, I must turn it over in
my mind, and be even with him, somehow--I owes him one for that. I say,
admiral."

"What now, you lubber?"

"Nothing; turn that over in your mind;" and away Jack walked, not quite
satisfied, but feeling, at least, that he had made a demonstration of
attack.

As for the admiral, he considered that the thump he had given Jack with
the stick, and it was no gentle one, was a decided balancing of accounts