"Of the very humblest, sir. I am a plain knight bachelor."
The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands. "A title is a title. Well, sir, as I was about to say, I worship a lord, but my whole soul is bound up in a ledger: and hence (so to speak) these tears: hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me. If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose— thank you, madam—and provided me with a pin from the chevaux de frise in her bodice—and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the very cuirass of matronly virtue—I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history. It is a somewhat curious one."
"I feel sure, sir"—my father bowed to him from the saddle—"it will lose nothing in the telling."
The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his late assailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father's stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story.
THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT.
"My name, sir, is Phineas Fett—"
He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty—a comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative. In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison, sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)."
"There was a Phineas Pett, a great shipbuilder for the Navy in King Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy."
"You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissionership—whatever the duties it may carry—would be the very thing, or a storekeepership, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that shipping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed the offing. I know not what exact distance constitutes an offing. My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar."
He paused again, glanced up at my father, and—on a nod of encouragement—continued—