“I might. It is quite true, I might have insinuated that consideration,” said he, with a crestfallen air and look.
“I suppose you did your best, Sir!” said she, with a sigh; and he felt all the sarcastic significance of its compassion. “Indeed, I am certain you did, and I thank you.” With these words, not conveyed in any excess of warmth or gratitude, she moved away, and M’Kinlay stood a picture of doubt, confusion, and dismay, muttering to himself some unintelligible words, whose import was, however, the hope of that day coming when these and many similar small scores might be all wiped out together.
CHAPTER LXIII. WITH LAWYERS
“What! that you, Harry? How comes it you have left all the fine folk so soon?” cried Captain Dodge, as he suddenly awoke and saw young Luttrell at his bedside. “Why, lad, I didn’t expect to see you back here these ten days to come. Warn’t they polite and civil to you?”
“That they were. They could not haye treated me better if I had been their own son.”
“How comes it, then, that you slipped your moorings?”
“Well, I can’t well say. There were new guests just arriving, and people I never saw, and so, with one thing or other, I thought I’d just move off; and—and—here I am.”
It was not difficult to see that this very lame excuse covered some other motive, and the old skipper was not the man to be put off by a flimsy pretext; but, rough sailor and buccaneer as he was, he could respect the feelings that he thought might be matter of secret meaning, and merely said: “I’m glad to see you back, at all events. I have no one to speak to in this place, and, as I lie here, I get so impatient, that I forget my smashed thigh-bone, and want to be up and about again.”
“So you will, very soon, I hope.”