“No thank’ee, Ma’am,” returned the Captain.
“Have a roast fowl,” said Mrs MacStinger, “with a bit of weal stuffing and some egg sauce. Come, Cap’en Cuttle! Give yourself a little treat!”
“No thank’ee, Ma’am,” returned the Captain very humbly.
“I’m sure you’re out of sorts, and want to be stimulated,” said Mrs MacStinger. “Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry wine?”
“Well, Ma’am,” rejoined the Captain, “if you’d be so good as take a glass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favour, Ma’am,” said the Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, “to accept a quarter’s rent ahead?”
“And why so, Cap’en Cuttle?” retorted Mrs MacStinger—sharply, as the Captain thought.
The Captain was frightened to dead “If you would Ma’am,” he said with submission, “it would oblige me. I can’t keep my money very well. It pays itself out. I should take it kind if you’d comply.”
“Well, Cap’en Cuttle,” said the unconscious MacStinger, rubbing her hands, “you can do as you please. It’s not for me, with my family, to refuse, no more than it is to ask.”
“And would you, Ma’am,” said the Captain, taking down the tin canister in which he kept his cash, from the top shelf of the cupboard, “be so good as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? If you could make it convenient, Ma’am, to pass the word presently for them children to come for’ard, in a body, I should be glad to see ’em.”
These innocent MacStingers were so many daggers to the Captain’s breast, when they appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confiding trustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, who had been his favourite, was insupportable to the Captain; the voice of Juliana MacStinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward of him.