“So do we—but they might go up the river and catch them.”
“We get so many in the pool, and they tempt the idle people.”
“Then they have no business to fall into temptation. I’ll do something to stop them.”
“Better not, father,” said Nic quietly. “It would only mean fighting and trouble.”
“Bah!” cried Captain Revel, with his face growing redder than usual. “What a fellow to be my son! Why, sir, when I was your age I gloried in a fight.”
“Did you, father?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Ah! but you were in training for a fighting-man.”
“And I was weak enough, to please your poor mother, to let you be schooled for a bookworm, and a man of law and quips and quiddities, always ready to enter into an argument with me, and prove that black’s white and white’s no colour, as they say. Hark ye, sir, if it was not too late I’d get Jack Lawrence to take you to sea with him now. He’ll be looking us up one of these days soon. It’s nearly time he put in at Plymouth again.”
“No, you would not, father,” said the young man quietly.