“Teach him what? Why to leave my watch and spectacles alone. I dare not lay them down for a moment.”
“I think we may teach him that, sir, if it is all that you require.”
“I ask no more: then he may go about the house like a tame rabbit. When will your ship be ready, boy?”
“In about a fortnight, sir. I called upon Captain Oughton the day before yesterday, but he was not at home. His steward gave me the information.”
“What is the name of the ship?”
“The Windsor Castle, sir.”
“Why all the India ships appear to be called Castles. Your last ship was the Bombay Castle I think?”
“Yes, sir: there are a great many of them so named:—they really are floating castles.”
“And full of ladies. You ‘castle your queens,’ as they do at chess. Humph!”
A pun from Mr John Forster was a rarity: he never had been known to make one before: and Newton asserts that he never heard him guilty of it afterwards. It deserves, therefore, bad as it was, to be recorded.