‘Oh, yes; why I gave it up because—because I could not get over the dreadful sea-sickness.’
‘Nelson was sea-sick,’ said Oswald.
‘Ah,’ said the robber; ‘but I hadn’t his luck or his pluck, or something. He stuck to it and won Trafalgar, didn’t he? “Kiss me, Hardy”—and all that, eh? I couldn’t stick to it—I had to resign. And nobody kissed me.’
I saw by his understanding about Nelson that he was really a man who had been to a good school as well as to Balliol.
Then we asked him, ‘And what did you do then?’
And Alice asked if he was ever a coiner, and we told him how we had thought we’d caught the desperate gang next door, and he was very much interested and said he was glad he had never taken to coining.
‘Besides, the coins are so ugly nowadays,’ he said, ‘no one could really find any pleasure in making them. And it’s a hole-and-corner business at the best, isn’t it?—and it must be a very thirsty one—with the hot metal and furnaces and things.’
And again he looked at the fire.
Oswald forgot for a minute that the interesting stranger was a robber, and asked him if he wouldn’t have a drink. Oswald has heard Father do this to his friends, so he knows it is the right thing. The robber said he didn’t mind if he did. And that is right, too.
And Dora went and got a bottle of Father’s ale—the Light Sparkling Family—and a glass, and we gave it to the robber. Dora said she would be responsible.