"When you was with Nelson?" asked Marjolaine.
"Ay. Battle o' Copenhagen; year Eighteen-one."
Here was a possible opening. At any rate Marjolaine would try.
"I suppose you had many officers under you?" she insinuated.
"Hundreds!" cried Sir Peter, enthusiastically; and then, feeling he had conveyed an exaggerated impression, "well—when I say hundreds—!" his memory awoke. "Ah! I was somebody, then!—But this infernal government—!"
Marjolaine laid her hand soothingly on his arm. "I suppose some of them were quite young?" she said, with splendidly assumed indifference. Every woman is a born actress.
"Middies?" cried the Admiral, with magnificent contempt. "Lord love ye, I took no notice o' them! Passel o' powder-monkeys!" Then he added with a touch of tender recollection, "Not but what Jack Sayle—"
"Jack what?" said Marjolaine quickly, as if she had not heard.
"Sayle. Jack Sayle. You know. Young feller I presented to your lady-mother a week ago. Time she swooned—"
"Oh, yes."