Ben was a very tall, broad-shouldered old fellow, but stooping a little from age: I should think he must have been at least sixty, if not more; still, he was a powerful, sinewy man. His nose, which was no small one, had been knocked on one side, as he told me, by the flukes (i.e., tail) of a whale, which cut in half a boat of which he was steersman. He had a very large mouth, with very few teeth in it, having lost them by the same accident; which, to use his own expression, had at the time “knocked his figure-head all to smash.” He had sailed many years in the whale fisheries, had at last been pressed, and served as quarter-master on board of a frigate for eight or nine years, when his ankle was broken by the rolling of a spar in a gale of wind. He was in consequence invalided for Greenwich. He walked stiff on this leg, and usually supported himself with a thick stick. Ben had noticed me from the time that my mother first came to Fisher’s Alley; he was the friend of my early days, and I was very much attached to him.
A minute or two afterwards my father pushed the pot of porter to him. Ben drank, and then said—
“Those be nice children, both on ’em—I know them well.”
“And what kind of a craft is the mother?” replied my father.
“Oh! why, she’s a little queer at times—she’s always so mighty particular about gentility.”
“Do you know why?” replied my father.
Ben shook his head.
“Then I’ll tell you: because she was once a lady’s ladies’ maid.”
“Well,” replied Ben, “I don’t understand much about titles and nobility, and those sort of things; but I’m sorry she’s gone down in the world, for though a little particular about gentility, she’s a good sort of woman in her way, and keeps up her character, and earns an honest livelihood.”
“So much the better for her,” replied my father, who refilled his pipe, and continued to smoke in silence.