"True, my Lord; but if, as you say, none of your family live long,—and you are now all grown up,—the time is short; and you should take the more earnest heed to these matters."
"That is not my theory, Power: 'Happy for the day, careless for the morrow,'—that's Scripture; at least it was when I was a boy," said the Captain, whose ideas of the Bible were not very correct.
"This is the very perversion of Scripture, my young friend; when it bids us not be careful of the morrow, it means we are to lay all our cares on One who has promised to carry them."
"Well, Power, I am not learned in divinity; you stick to your trade, and I will to mine; you be a soldier of God, and I will a soldier of the King, or the devil, if you like it!"
A suppressed murmur of disapprobation followed this, and the Earl changed the conversation by a totally irrelevant remark. Sir Richard, unfortunately for himself, as the story will show, brought back the conversation by saying they had found some striking resemblances to the present family in some of the portraits.
"Indeed!" said the Earl. "And in whom did you find my likeness?"
"In the seventh Earl,—Algernon, I think was his name,—a young man in a hunting suit. Then we found out a likeness for Lady Florence, in her grandaunt Guendolen; and for the Marchioness in the Abbess Augusta; but the best of all was—"
"Don't, please!" said Lady Florence, whispering across Johnny; "don't say it; John doesn't like it." (Whether he did not comprehend Lady Florence's meaning, or whether he wished to prove the truth of her assertion, we know not; but in an evil moment he finished his remark)—
"—was the likeness to the Captain."
"And to whom do you liken me?" said the Captain, in a gloomy voice.