"And that's just what I said," I returned; "for here have I battered about London, that's worse than the sea, and ages a man twice as fast----"
Mr. Glen interrupted me with some astonishment, and, I thought, a little alarm.
"Why," says she, "this is no place for the likes of you--a crazy tumbledown of a tavern. All very well for tarry sailor folk that's never seen nothing better than forecastle. But you'll sicken of it in a week. Sure, you have not dropped your anchor here."
"We'll call it a kedge, Mr. Glen," said I.
"A kedge, you say," answered Mr. Glen, with a titter, "and a kedge we'll make it. It's a handy thing to get on board in a hurry."
He spoke with a wheedling politeness, but very likely a threat underlay his words. I thought it wise to take no notice of them, but, rising from my seat, I wished him good night. And there the conversation would have ended but for a couple of pictures upon the wall which caught my eye.
One was the ordinary picture which you may come upon in a hundred alehouses by the sea: the sailor leaving his cottage for a voyage, his wife and children clinging about his knees, and in the distance an impossible ship unfurling her sails upon an impossible ocean. The second, however, it was, which caught my attention. It was the picture of a sailor's return. His wife and children danced before him, he was clad in magnificent garments, and to prove the prosperity of his voyage he carried in his hand a number of gold watches and chains; and the artist, whether it was that he had a sense of humour or that he merely doubted his talents, instead of painting the watches, had cut holes in the canvas and inserted little discs of bright metal.
"This is a new way of painting pictures, Mr. Glen," said I.
Mr. Glen's taste in pictures was crude, and for these he expressed a quite sentimental admiration.
"But," I objected, "the artist is guilty of a libel, for he makes the sailor out to be a sneak-thief."