Then I bethought me I had got the metaphor wrong. I would be on a track no longer, but in tow to him on the high seas of life—a thing terrifying to a middle-aged parson who had long ago found a backwater and bobbed at anchor in it. All these ideas, unformulated, passed through my mind in the fuss of his arrival and our greetings.
At dinner he made merry over the pretentiousness of the wine.
“Confess, now, you would not have had champagne up for a poor devil of a deck-hand!”
“I wouldn’t have had it in any case. It was Bates insisted.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said Bates.
Bates had so got into the habit of talking to me during my usual solitary meals, that he committed the unpardonable indiscretion in a servant of having ears and a voice. It was plain he did not regard Edmund as “company.”
“Well you didn’t actually say anything,” I admitted in justice to him.
Edmund laughed, evidently a little triumphant at the devotion of Bates. He insisted on his bringing another glass and pledging him.
Informal as the occasion was, Bates was a little self-conscious at this.
“My best respects, sir,” he said as he lifted the glass.