"Messmate," said Peterday, with a note of concern in his voice, "how's the wind?"
"Tolerable, comrade, tolerable!"
"Then—why forget the tea?"
"Tea!" said the Sergeant with a guilty start, "why—so I am!—Mr. Bellew sir,—your pardon!" and, forthwith he began to pour out the tea very solemnly, but with less precision of movement than usual, and with abstracted gaze.
"The Sergeant tells me you are a musician," said Bellew, as Peterday handed him another muffin.
"A musician,—me! think o' that now! To be sure, I do toot on the tin whistle now and then, sir, such things as 'The British Grenadiers,' and the 'Girl I left behind me,' for my shipmate, and 'The Bay o' Biscay,' and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave,' for myself,—but a musician, Lord! Ye see, sir," said Peterday, taking advantage of the Sergeant's abstraction, and whispering confidentially behind his muffin, "that messmate o' mine has such a high opinion o' my gifts as is fair over-powering, and a tin whistle is only a tin whistle, after all."
"And it is about the only instrument I could ever get the hang of," said
Bellew.
"Why—do you mean as you play, sir?"
"Hardly that, but I make a good bluff at it."
"Why then,—I've got a couple o' very good whistles,—if you're so minded we might try a doo-et, sir, arter tea."