“Yes; and I thought it so good of him, to answer so straightforwardly. He said that he used to be very fond of it, but was afraid that he should fall off now.”
“I should like to see him. I tell you what we'll do. We will make him ride back on Monday morning, and put him on 'Blue Bangles,' who won't have seen daylight since Friday. Won't he jump about a bit! What a shame it is, not to let us ride on Sundays!”
Ignorant of these kind intentions, Scudamore was enjoying himself in his quiet, observant way. Mr. Twemlow, the rector of the parish, had chanced--as he often chanced on a Saturday, after buckling up a brace of sermons--to issue his mind (with his body outside it) for a little relief of neighbourhood. And these little airings of his chastening love--for he loved everybody, when he had done his sermon--came, whenever there was a fair chance of it, to a glass of the fine old port which is the true haven for an ancient Admiral.
“Just in time, Rector,” cried Admiral Darling, who had added by many a hardship to his inborn hospitality. “This is my young friend Blyth Scudamore, the son of one of my oldest friends. You have heard of Sir Edmond Scudamore?”
“And seen him and felt him. And to him I owe, under a merciful Providence, the power of drinking in this fine port the health of his son, which I do with deep pleasure, for the excellence both of end and means.”
The old man bowed at the praise of his wine, and the young one at that of his father. Then, after the usual pinch of snuff from the Rector's long gold box, the host returned to the subject he had been full of before this interruption.
“The question we have in hand is this. What is to be done with our friend Blyth? He was getting on famously, till this vile peace came. Twemlow, you called it that yourself, so that argument about words is useless. Blyth's lieutenancy was on the books, and the way they carry things on now, and shoot poor fellows' heads off, he might have been a post-captain in a twelvemonth. And now there seems nothing on earth before him better than Holy-Orders.”
“Admiral Darling is kind enough to think,” said Scudamore, in his mild, hesitative way, blushing outwardly, but smiling inwardly, “that I am too good to be a clergyman.”