. "Suppose I don't?" he
remarked. "I'm a respect-able British tradesman, and my money is as good
as yours. I've as much right to be here as you 'ave. I've never done
anything I'm ashamed of!"

"And you never will," said Captain Cooper's friend, grimly, "not if you
live to be a hundred."

Mr. Kybird looked surprised at the tribute. "Thankee," he said,
gratefully.

"Well, we don't want you here," said Captain Nugent. "We prefer your
room to your company."

Mr. Kybird leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into
an expression of withering contempt. Then he took up a glass and drank,
and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had made
free with the speaker's whisky.

"Don't apologize," interrupted the captain; "it's soon remedied."

He took the glass up gingerly and flung it with a crash into the
fireplace. Then he rang the bell.

"I've smashed a dirty glass," he said, as the bar-man entered. "How
much?"

The man told him, and the captain, after a few stern remarks about
privacy and harpies, left the room with his friends, leaving the
speechless Mr. Kybird gazing at the broken glass and returning evasive
replies to the inquiries of the curious Charles.

He finished his gin and water slowly. For months he had been screwing up
his courage to carry that room by assault, and this was the result. He
had been insulted almost in the very face of Charles, a youth whose
reputation as a gossip was second to none in Sunwich.

"Do you know what I should do if I was you?" said that worthy, as he
entered the room again and swept up the broken glass.

"I do not," said Mr. Kybird, with lofty indifference.

"I shouldn't come 'ere again, that's what I should do," said Charles,
frankly. "Next time he'll throw you in the fireplace."

"Ho," said the heated Mr. Kybird. "Ho, will he? I'd like to see 'im.
I'll make 'im sorry for this afore I've done with 'im. I'll learn 'im to
insult a respectable British tradesman. I'll show him who's who."

"What'll you do?" inquired the other.

"Never you mind," said Mr. Kybird, who was not in a position to satisfy
his curiosity--"never you mind. You go and get on with your work,
Charles, and p'r'aps by the time your moustache 'as grown big enough to
be seen, you'll 'ear something."

"I 'eard something the other day," said the bar-man, musingly; "about you
it was, but I wouldn't believe it."

"Wot was it?" demanded the other.

"Nothin