he 'nasty lawyer,' called to the bar in the fullness of
time--which means after dining sufficiently--to the great disgust of
your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me
shot."

"LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great story.
But now you'll make it true."

"To wit--as we say at Lincoln's Inn--she has not longed always for my
death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall afford
her that gratification. I shall keep out of danger as zealously as your
lordship rushes into it."

"Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense," Admiral
Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of the table.
"Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not mean a word of
it. He belongs to the peace--peace--peace-at-any-price lot. But when a
man wanted to rob him last winter, he knocked him down, and took him by
the throat, and very nearly killed him."

"That's the only game to play," exclaimed Lord Nelson, who had been
looking at Frank Darling with undisguised disgust. "My young friend, you
are not such a fool after all. And why should you try to be one?"

"My brother," said the sweet-tempered Faith, "never tries to be a fool,
Lord Nelson; he only tries to be a poet."

This made people laugh; and Nelson, feeling that he had been rude to a
youth who could not fairly answer him, jumped from his chair with the
lightness of a boy, and went round to Frank Darling, with his thin
figure leaning forward, and his gray unpowdered hair tossed about, and
upon his wrinkled face that smile which none could ever resist, because
it was so warm and yet so sad.

"Shake hands, my dear young friend," he cried, "though I can not offer
the right one. I was wrong to call you a fool because you don't look at
things as I do. Poets are almost as good as sailors, and a great deal
better than soldiers. I have felt a gift that way myself, and turned out
some very tidy lines. But I believe they were mainly about myself, and I
never had time to go on with them."

Such little touches of simplicity and kindness, from a man who never
knew the fear of men, helped largely to produce that love of Nelson
which England felt, and will always feel.

"My lord," replied the young man, bending low--for he was half a cubit
higher than the mighty captain--"it is good for the world that you have
no right arm, when you disarm it so with your left one."

CHAPTER VI

AS OTHER