"The postman won't do his business quicker than Sedgett 'll tap this tale upon every door in the parish," said Jonathan.
"I can only say I'm sorry, for your sake;" Robert was expressing his contrition, when his father caught him up,—
"Who can hurt me?—my sake? Have I got the habits of a sot?—what you'd call 'a beast!' but I know the ways o' beasts, and if you did too, you wouldn't bring them in to bear your beastly sins. Who can hurt me?— You've been quarrelling with this young gentleman about a woman—did you damage him?"
"If knuckles could do it, I should have brained him, sir," said Robert.
"You struck him, and you got the best of it?"
"He got the worst of it any way, and will again."
"Then the devil take you for a fool! why did you go and drink I could understand it if you got licked. Drown your memory, then, if that filthy soaking's to your taste; but why, when you get the prize, we'll say, you go off headlong into a manure pond?—There! except that you're a damned idiot!" Jonathan struck the air, as to observe that it beat him, but for the foregoing elucidation: thundering afresh, "Why did you go and drink?"
"I went, sir, I went—why did I go?" Robert slapped his hand despairingly to his forehead. "What on earth did I go for?—because I'm at sea, I suppose. Nobody cares for me. I'm at sea, and no rudder to steer me. I suppose that's it. So, I drank. I thought it best to take spirits on board. No; this was the reason—I remember: that lady, whoever she was, said something that stung me. I held the fellow under her eyes, and shook him, though she was begging me to let him off. Says she—but I've drunk it clean out of my mind."
"There, go in and look at yourself in the glass," said Jonathan.
"Give me your hand first,"—Robert put his own out humbly.