“Yes,” said Brydell, adding shamefacedly, “I had a chance in a competitive examination, but that fellow you were talking with—Esdaile—got ahead of me.”
At this it was Grubb’s turn to color. He shifted his feet and said hesitatingly:—
“Mr. Brydell, please don’t go for to tell it, sir, but Mr. Esdaile—Mr. Esdaile is my son. His grandfather’s left him some money, if he’d take the same name—Esdaile; and as the boy didn’t like the name o’ Grubb, nohow, he got his name changed by law—and I’d ruther—I’d ruther, sir, the folks here didn’t know it, bein’ as I ain’t nothin’ but a marine.”
Brydell was so taken aback for a moment that he did not know what to say, and Grubb with unwonted fluency continued:—
“I’ve sent in my application for a transfer, sir, ’cause the boy don’t want—I mean I don’t want—to be stationed here, a-doin’ guard duty while my boy is in the academy. I’ve talked it over with one o’ the officers as I’ve knowed, and who has been a good friend to me, and he says maybe it will be best all around. And I hope nobody will know that Cadet William Esdaile is the son o’ Grubb the marine.”
“You may be right in getting transferred somewhere else,” answered Brydell after a moment, “and if the officer advised you, I wouldn’t venture to say a word; but I don’t see why your boy should not want to recognize”— Here he stopped, not knowing how to keep on.
“Didn’t I tell you, sir, long years ago as how the boy was gittin’ above his father?” burst out poor Grubb, his eyes filling with tears. “He’s ashamed o’ me; he’s ashamed to be seen a-talkin’ with me, and I can give him half my pay, and I’d give him all o’ it if he needed it, but I can’t stand bein’ looked down upon by him.”
“Why, if you were my father, I shouldn’t be in the least ashamed of you,” cried Brydell hotly. “You haven’t had the advantage we other fellows have had, but you’re one of the most honest and respectable men in the world; so says my father and Admiral Beaumont, too, and it’s a great deal better to come out and be honest and above board about these things than to be skulking and hiding them.”
“That’s true for you, Mr. Brydell,” replied Grubb, who had natural good sense and much more experience than Brydell. “That’s your natur’. But it ain’t everybody’s natur’. It ain’t my boy’s natur’; I wish it was. It’s the easiest way and the best way o’ gittin’ through life, but it takes all sorts o’ people to make up a world, and there’s lots o’ people that could no more be aboveboard than a pig can fly.”
Brydell had not lived long enough to appreciate this truth, and he parted from Grubb with a mixture of respect and contempt for him, but with unabated affection, and a most genuine disgust for Esdaile. Perhaps it was helped a little by Esdaile’s triumph over him, but Brydell had always hated a sneak, and he had very good ground for thinking the accomplished Mr. Esdaile was constitutionally a sneak.