to visit Captain Stubbard, with
whose eldest daughter Maggie and the cannons of the battery he was by
this time desperately in love; and poor Frank was left to have it out
with the angry father.

"I very seldom speak harshly, my boy," said the Admiral, drawing near
his son gradually, for his wrath (like good vegetables) was very short
of staple; "and when I do so you may feel quite certain that there is
sound reason at the bottom of it"--here he looked as if his depth was
unfathomable. "It is not only that I am not myself, because of the many
hours spent upon hard leather, and vile chalks of flint that go by me
half asleep, when I ought to be snoring in the feathers; neither has it
anything to do with my consuming the hide of some quadruped for dinner,
instead of meat. And the bread is made of rye, if of any grain at all;
I rather think of spent tan, kneaded up with tallow ends, such as I have
seen cast by in bushels, when the times were good. And every loaf of
that costs two shillings--one for me, and one for Government. They all
seem to acknowledge that I can put up with that; and I make a strict
point of mild language, which enables them to do it again with me.
And all up and down the roads, everybody likes me. But if I was shot
to-morrow, would they care twopence?"

"I am sure they would, sir; and a good deal more than that," answered
Frank, who perceived that his father was out of his usual lines of
thinking, perhaps because he had just had a good dinner--so ill do we
digest our mercies. "I am sure that there is nobody in Sussex, Kent, or
Hampshire who does not admire and respect and trust you."

"I dare say, and rejoice to see me do the work they ought to do. They
have long nights in bed, every one of them, and they get their meals
when they want them. I am not at all astonished at what Nelson said. He
is younger than I am by a good many years, but he seems to have picked
up more than I have, in the way of common sentiments, and such like.
'You may do everybody's work, if you are fool enough,' he said to me the
last time I saw him; 'and ease them of their souls as well, if you are
rogue enough, as they do in the Popish countries. I am nearly sick of
doing it,' he said, and he looked it. 'If you once begin with it, you
must go on.' I find it more true every day of my life. Don't interrupt
me; don't go on with comfortable stuff about doing good, and one's duty
towards one's Country--though I fear that you think ve