“Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, sure?” said Mrs Gilmour, following up Bob’s flank attack; his father and mother enjoying the discussion immensely, coupled as it was with the old sailor’s comical embarrassment. “Tell me, now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Taking off his hat and shoving his hands through his hair until he raised it up on the top of his head in a high ridge, he looked at his tormentors appealingly; although, the merry twinkle in his bird-like eyes took off somewhat from his contrition.
“Do forgive me!” implored he in accents that had a very suspicious chuckle about them. “I confess my sins!”
“You must clear yourself completely, sir, before you can hope to obtain absolution for your sins of omission,” insisted Mrs Gilmour, pretending to be very stern indeed. “Now, prisoner at the bar, answer truly, have you or have you not got a yacht?”
“I have,” he replied solemnly, entering into her humour. “By Jove, I have, ma’am!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that at all events,” retorted his questioner in rather an injudicial way. “Sure, I didn’t think you had one at all, not having seen it after all your talking about it. What sort of a yacht is it, now?”
“Only a half-decked little cutter of about two or three tons,” answered the Captain abjectly, trying to minimise his offence. “A very little one, ma’am, I assure you.”
Mrs Gilmour burst into a fit of laughter, in which they all joined heartily; the barrister’s jovial roar being heard above the music of the band.
“Ah, no wonder you didn’t like my seeing it!” she cried with pleasant irony, which, however, made the old sailor wince, this “yacht” of his being a subject on which he was wont to enlarge amongst his friends. “Why, from what you said, I thought she was a big schooner like the one that took the cup at Cowes last year when we all went over with those horrid Tomkinses to see the regatta! Call that a yacht, a boat of such a size? I call it a cockleshell!”
This nettled the Captain very considerably, it must be confessed.