"Never touch wine! Here's another; here's a young prig! I don't believe you—yes, I do, too! Demmy, sir, if you never touch wine it's because you prefer brandy! Waiter!"
"I thank you, sir. Order no brandy for me. If I never use intoxicating liquors it is because I gave a promise to that effect to my dying mother."
"Say no more—say no more, lad. Drink water, if you like. It won't hurt you!" exclaimed the old man, filling and quaffing a glass of champagne. Then he said:
"I quarreled with your mother, Herbert, for marrying a man that I hated—yes, hated, Herbert, for he differed with me about the tariff and—the Trinity! Oh, how I hated him, boy, until he died! And then I wondered in my soul, as I wonder even now, how I ever could have been so infuriated against a poor fellow now cold in his grave, as I shall be in time. I wrote to my sister and expressed my feelings; but, somehow or other, Herbert, we never came to a right understanding again. She answered my letter affectionately enough, but she refused to accept a home for herself and child under my roof, saying that she thanked me for my offer, but that the house which had been closed against her husband ought never to become the refuge of his widow. After that we never corresponded, and I have no doubt, Herbert, that she, naturally enough, taught you to dislike me."
"Not so, sir; indeed, you wrong her. She might have been loyal to my father's memory without being resentful toward you. She said that you had a noble nature, but it was often obscured by violent passions. On her dead-bed she bade me, should I ever meet you, to say that she repented her refusal of your offered kindness."
"And consented that it should be transferred to her orphan boy?" added Old Hurricane, with the tears like raindrops in his stormy eyes.
"No, sir, she said not so."
"But yet she would not have disapproved a service offered to her son."
"Uncle—since you permit me to call you so—I want nothing. I have a good berth in the Susan and a kind friend in her captain."
"You have all your dear mother's pride, Herbert."