“It's easy enough to understand me. You are as thick as thieves, you and that old Admiral,—that Sir Charles Cobham. I saw you talking to the old fellow at the meet the other morning. You 've only to say, 'There's Tom—my brother Tom—wants a navy appointment; he's not passed yet, but if the fellows at the Board got a hint, just as much as, “Don't be hard on him—“'”
“I 'd not do it to make you a post-captain, sir,” said she, severely. “You very much overrate my influence, and very much underrate my integrity, when you ask it.”
“Hoity-toity! ain't we dignified! So you'd rather see me plucked, eh?”
“Yes, if that should be the only alternative.”
“Thank you, Polly, that's all! thank you,” said he; and he drew his sleeve across his eyes.
“My dear Tom,” said she, laying her white soft hand on his coarse brown fingers, “can you not see that if I even stooped to anything so unworthy, that it would compromise your whole prospects in life? You'd obtain an assistant-surgeoncy, and never rise above it.”
“And do I ask to rise above it? Do I ask anything beyond getting out of this house, and earning bread that is not grudged me?”
“Nay, nay; if you talk that way, I've done.”
“Well, I do talk that way. He sent me off to Kilkenny last week—you saw it yourself—to bring out that trash for the shop, and he would n't pay the car hire, and made me carry two stone of carbonate of magnesia and a jar of leeches fourteen miles. You were just taking that post and rail out of Nixon's lawn as I came by. You saw me well enough.”
“I am glad to say I did not,” said she, sighing.