“I beg your pardon, certainly,” said Huish; and, partly from habit, he placed his glass in his eye and brought it to bear on the speaker.
“This is rather a good story—eh, doctor?”
“Yes. Go on, Captain Lawdor.”
“Well, you see, I had been communicating with the Admiralty for six years about my invention when—would you oblige me by taking that glass out of your eye?” said the captain, breaking off short in his narrative. “It irritates me, and makes me feel as if I must throw something at it.”
John Huish’s eyeglass dropped inside his vest, while, in spite of all his efforts to master his emotions, he glanced uneasily at the door.
“But you would not do anything so rude, Lawdor,” said the doctor gravely, as he fixed his eye upon the captain.
“Thank you, doctor. No; of course I would not. I should be extremely sorry to insult a patient of yours.”
Huish began to feel for his glass, but remembered himself, and listened eagerly to the captain, while Mr Roberts seemed to have sunk into a pensive, thoughtful state, paying no heed to what was going on at the table.
“If I had danced attendance in Whitehall once,” said Captain Lawdor, “I had hung about that entrance a thousand times, and it was fill up forms, make minutes, present petitions to my Lords, address this department and come back to that, till it nearly drove me—till,” he added hastily, “I was very wroth with them, and one day—let me see, I think I told you,” he continued, rolling up a piece of new bread into a marble, “that I was an excellent shot with a biscuit?” and he stared hard at Huish.
“Yes, you did,” said Huish, smiling.