“Look here, Dick,” said Bob sharply, “don’t you sneer at your officer because he makes free with you sometimes.”
The middy turned and walked off, leaving Dick cutting himself a fresh plug of tobacco.
“He’ll make a smart ’un by-and-by, that he will,” muttered the old fellow, nodding his head admiringly; “and I’m sorry I said what I did to the high-sperretted little chap, for he’s made of the real stuff, after all.”
On the island, Tom Long was feeling quite as important as the middy. A keen sense of disappointment was troubling him, but he would not show it. He had several times over been looking at his gun, and thinking that it would carry a bullet as well as a rifle, and wishing that he could have game to try it. But soon afterwards he encountered pleasant Mrs Major Sandars.
“Ah! Mr Long,” she cried, “I’ve just been seeing Miss Linton and Miss Sinclair. Now you know you have these deserted ladies and the whole of the women under your charge, and I hope you’ll protect us.”
“I shall do my utmost, madam,” said Tom Long importantly. “You ladies needn’t be under the smallest apprehension, for you will be as safe as if the major and Mr Linton were here.”
“I shall tell Miss Linton so,” said Mrs Major, smiling; and she nodded and went away, leaving the young ensign uncomfortable, as he felt a kind of suspicion that he had been speaking very consequentially, and making himself absurd.
“I wish I was either a man or a boy,” he said to himself pettishly. “I feel just like a man, and yet people will treat me as if I were a boy. That Mrs Major was only talking to me patronisingly, and half-laughing at me. I can see it now. Oh! here’s Smithers.”
Captain Smithers came up, looking rather careworn and sad, and nodded in a friendly way at his junior.
“Well, Long,” he said, “so we are commanders-in-chief just now. At least, I am. You’ll have to be my colonel, major, and adjutant, all in one.”