her and get
spliced. Well, wot then? why, your mother is her aunt by vartue of her
marriage with her uncle, and so your mother is _your_ aunt in consikence
of your marriage with the niece--d'ye see?"

Bill laughed, and said he didn't quite see it, but he was willing to
take it on credit, as he was not in a humour for discussion just then.

"Very well," said Ben, "but, to return to the p'int--which is, if I may
so say, a p'int of distinkshun between topers an' argifiers, for topers
are always returnin' to the pint, an' argifiers are for ever departin'
from it--to return to it, I say: you've no notion of the pecoolier
sirkumstances in which I left my poor old mother. It weighs heavy on my
heart, I assure ye, for it's only three months since I was pressed
myself, an' the feelin's ain't had time to heal yet. Come, I'll tell 'e
how it was. You owe me some compensation for that crack on the nose you
gave me, so stand still and listen."

Bill, who was becoming interested in his messmate in spite of himself,
smiled and nodded his head as though to say, "Go on."

"Well, you must know my old mother is just turned eighty, an' I'm
thirty-six, so, as them that knows the rule o' three would tell ye, she
was just forty-four when I began to trouble her life. I was a most
awful wicked child, it seems. So they say at least; but I've no
remembrance of it myself. Hows'ever, when I growed up and ran away to
sea and got back again an' repented--mainly because I didn't like the
sea--I tuk to mendin' my ways a bit, an' tried to make up to the old
'ooman for my prewious wickedness. I do believe I succeeded, too, for I
got to like her in a way I never did before; and when I used to come
home from a cruise--for, of course, I soon went to sea again--I always
had somethin' for her from furrin' parts. An' she was greatly pleased
at my attentions an' presents--all except once, when I brought her the
head of a mummy from Egypt. She couldn't stand that at all--to my great
disappointment; an' what made it wuss was, that after a few days they
had put it too near the fire, an' the skin it busted an' the stuffin'
began to come out, so I took it out to the back-garden an' gave it
decent burial behind the pump.

"Hows'ever, as I wos goin' to say, just at the time I was nabbed by the
press-gang was my mother's birthday, an' as I happened to be flush o'
cash, I thought I'd give her a treat an' a surprise, so off I goes to
buy her some things, wh