"Yes," said Harvey; "and a good job for England he is."
"What d'ye say? Good job for England? What about the Fenians? What about Parnell and them Irishmen? What about the rascals who were nabbed settin' fire to infernal machinery for blowing up the House of Parliament? And then he talks of givin' them Home Rule! What about Piggott, Parnell and company?"
"Yes, and what about the forgeries, Mr Sniggins," said Harvey.
"Don't call me Sniggins!" said Captain Cowan, "I'm a respectable man."
"Don't you say this and that about Gladstone, then," said Harvey.
"We will if we like," said the bulbous friend, who showed in his phlegmatic way signs of taking sides against the great Liberal leader.
"What do you know about it?" contemptuously interposed Harvey. "My advice is to you, 'keep yourself sober and your mouth shut, and don't show your empty-headedness to people who have forgotten more than ever you knew!' You talk about Gladstone! Why, you would never have known there was such a man if I hadn't told you. Of all the brazen cheek, well! You take the cake to talk to me about a man that made England and stopped the gentry from pilfering the whole thing."
"Get away, man!" replied our portly friend; "you would swear you were the Duke of Argyle. I tell you he would have given the country away to the foreigners if we hadn't stepped in."
"Do you call yourself 'we'!" interjected Harvey, his utterance almost incoherent with anger; "you want to go to school again and get some learnin'."
"Get some learnin', d'ye say, Mr Know-all? What has Gladstone done for the sailors, you an' me? That's a poser for you; and look at the money he gave away about the Alabama to the Yankees, instead of fightin' them for it like an Englishman. That's another poser for you!" retorted the big, burly antagonist who had wakened up and entered into the discussion with elephantine zeal. "Some of you would let foreigners jump on your stomachs, but Captain Cowan and me says, 'England for ever!' Why, if it hadn't been for Palmerston and the old Jew, we would all have been Russians or blooming Germans before now."