“You're a favorite with both; and if it hadn't been for the very decided preference you showed, I tell you frankly they 'd have been tearing caps about you ere this.”
“This flattery overwhelms me; and all the more that it is quite unexpected.”
“None of your mock modesty with me, you dog!” cried the Commodore, with a chuckling laugh. “No fellow had ever any success of that kind that he did n't know it; and, upon my life, I believe the very conceit it breeds goes halfway with women.”
“It is no small prize to learn the experiences of a man like yourself on such a theme.”
“Well, I 'll not deny it,” said he, with a short sigh. “I had my share—some would say a little more than my share—of that sort of thing. You'll not believe it, perhaps, but I was a devilish good-looking fellow when I was—let me see—about six or eight years younger than you are now.”
“I am prepared to credit it,” said Maitland, dryly.
“There was no make-up about me,—no lacquering, no paint, no padding; all honest scantling from keel to taffrail. I was n't tall, it's true. I never, with my best heels on, passed five feet seven and a half.”
“The height of Julius Caesar,” said Maitland, calmly.
“I know nothing about Julius Caesar; but I 'll say this, it was a good height for a sailor in the old gun-brig days, when they never gave you much head-room 'tween decks. It don't matter so much now if every fellow in the ward-room was as tall as yourself. What's in this jar here?”
“Seltzer.”