“No good to think about that. Father won’t let you go; I asked him.”
“You did, Ram?”
“Yes, I asked him—though you wouldn’t be friends and shake hands.”
“What did he say?” cried Archy, ignoring the latter part of his gaoler’s remarks.
“Said I was a young fool, and he’d rope’s-end me if I talked any more such stuff.”
The midshipman did not notice it, but there was a quiet and softened air in Ram’s behaviour toward him, and the boy seemed reluctant to go, but, in the midshipman’s natural desire to get away, he could think of nothing else but self.
“It would not be the act of a fool to set one of the officers of the Royal Navy at liberty.”
“He says it would, for it would be the end of us all here. The sailors would come and pretty well turn us out of house and home. No; he won’t let you go.”
“How long is he going to keep me here?”
“Don’t know. Long as he likes.”