“Ay, Von Edelstein. And where’s Von Edelstein?”
“He’s coming on board this evening,” said Lord Dunseverick. “But you needn’t wait for him unless you like. We’ve got steam up. Why not slip away?”
“Because it’s no my way of doing business,” said McMunn, “to slip away, as you call it, without paying for what I’ve got. I’m a man of principle.”
“Talking of your principles,” said Lord Dunseverick, “what did you bring on board in that basket this afternoon? It looked to me like beer.”
“It was beer.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Lord Dunseverick. “Let’s have a couple of bottles.”
Ginty took his pipe from his mouth and grinned pleasantly. He wanted beer.
“You’ll be thinking maybe,” said McMunn, “that I’m going back on my temperance principles?”
“We don’t think anything of the sort,” said Lord Dunseverick. “We think that foreign travel has widened your principles out a bit. That’s what we think, isn’t it, Ginty?”
“My principles are what they always were,” said McMunn, “but I’ve some small share of commonsense. I know there’s a foreigner coming on board the night, a baron and a dissipated man——”