“I was.”
“To where?”
“To Mr Roots’ academy.”
“Right—a good boy, an amiable boy, he was removed to Mr Roots’: and, having there imbibed the rudiments of a classical education, you were removed to where?”
“To a boarding-school kept by a French gentleman at Stickenham, where, in his wife, I thought I had found a mother—”
“Stop, we are not come to that yet, that is too affecting—of that anon, as somebody says in some play. Have you, Captain Reud, a glass of water ready, should this amiable youth or myself feel faint during this exciting investigation?”
“Perfectly ready,” said the Creole, decidedly in one of his insane fits; for he immediately skipped behind his lordship, and, jumping upon the locker, stood ready to invert a glass of water upon his nicely-powdered head, containing at least three gallons, this glass being a large globe, containing several curious fish, which swung, attached to a beam, directly over my interrogator.
Here was a critical situation for me! A mad captain about to blow the gampus (i.e. souse) a lord of the Admiralty, that same lord, I firmly believed, about to declare himself my father. I was, in a manner, spell-bound. Afraid to interrupt the conference, I bethought me that my Lord Whiffledale would be no less my father wet or dry, and so I determined to let things take their course. So I permitted his lordship to go on with his questions, at every one of which Captain Reud, looking more like a baboon than a human being, canted the globe more and more.
“All very satisfactory—all very satisfactory, indeed! And now, Ralph, on whom have you been in the habit of drawing for your allowance while you were in the West Indies?”
“Mr —, of King’s Bench Walk, in the Temple.”