“Don’t laugh, sir,” exclaimed the captain. “This is not a ribald jest.”
“Breakers ahead, captain,” said the doctor, holding his glass to be refilled.
“To be sure, of course, doctor. Wear ship—you are listening, sir?”
“With the greatest attention,” replied Huish, who was becoming reconciled to his position.
“Well, sir, one day I went with my pockets filled with the roundest, smallest, and hardest ships’ biscuits I could procure, and—you are not attending, Roberts,” he exclaimed, filliping the bread marble at John Huish’s vis-à-vis, who bowed and smiled.
“Well, sir, as I told you, I went loaded with the biscuits, and marched straight into a board room, or a committee room, or something of the kind, and there I stormed them for quite ten minutes before they got me out. Ha, ha, ha! I emptied my pockets first, and the way I rattled the biscuits on one bald-headed fellow’s pate was something to remember. I did not miss him once, Mr Huish,” he said, turning sharply round.
“Indeed?” he said, smiling.
“In—deed, in—deed,” said the captain. “It was such a head! He was one of those youngish men whose heads are so aggravatingly white and smooth and shiny that they do not look bald, but perfectly naked. He was a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, and I declare to you, sir, that his head was perfectly indecent till I coloured it a little with the biscuits.”
“Yes, an amusing story,” said the doctor, as the dinner went on. “Come, Roberts, you are very quiet. Have a glass of that dry champagne?”
“And once again I see that brow,” said Mr Roberts in a low, soft, sweet voice: “no bridal wreath is there, a widow’s sombre cap conceals—thank you, doctor,” he continued, sighing as he altered the position of the glass.