“Now make an apology to the orderly,” said the ensign sternly.
“I’m sorry, Grubb, I’m awful sorry the rifle went off—’cause I’ve got a big scolding from papa and the admiral, too. But you hadn’t any business touching the flag; you know you hadn’t. Come around next Saturday morning and I’ll give you my half-dollar.”
“Thanky, sir,” answered the orderly, “but my feelin’s is too much hurt for to take money from you.”
“Well, then,” said Young Brydell promptly, “I’ll ask you to my birthday party instead. I’m going to have a birthday next week. I’ll be nine years old; and I’m to ask anybody I like, and I’ll ask you and Capps, the watchman, and some other fellows. Will that help your feelin’s?”
“Course it will, sir,” answered Grubb again; “and sailors and marines is so fond o’ one another.” Capps was a retired boatswain who was a watchman at the yard, and as Grubb said this he slightly closed his left eye.
On that understanding they parted. It was Young Brydell’s proud privilege on his birthday to ask his own guests, and he had before included Capps, who was until the advent of Grubb his most intimate friend.
On this Saturday, therefore, there was a table set on the broad back piazza of the ensign’s quarters. Aunt Emeline disapproved of the whole thing, but Cunliffe’s mother, who was a kindly woman, saw that the cake was there with nine candles in it, and Young Brydell sat at the head of the table. All the members of Company C, including Micky O’Toole, first sergeant, were present, and Capps, a bronzed old seaman, and Grubb, who was almost as handsome as the ensign, Young Brydell’s father. His ear still had a red scar, but over a bowl of lemonade Grubb and Young Brydell swore eternal friendship, and the friendship lasted until the end came.
The ensign’s quarters were just back of the admiral’s great roomy house, where he dwelt in solitary magnificence; and Admiral Beaumont, sometimes finding the house lonely and silent,—as houses are where there are no women and children,—would look from his back piazza and often see a lonely little boy, too, in the ensign’s quarters. For Young Brydell was never made to go to school as regularly as the other boys, and was, unluckily, allowed his own way entirely too much—all because he had no mother.
The admiral, feeling sorry for the child and finding a kind of odd and pleasant companionship with him, would send Grubb over with the request that Master Dick be allowed to come over to luncheon, and even Aunt Emeline could not ignore that request. So Young Brydell would go off quite joyfully with Grubb and soon be seated opposite the admiral at the round table in the big dining-room. The two would then exchange reminiscences—Young Brydell pumping the admiral industriously about “When you were on the old Potomac, sir,” or “That time you were in the siege of Vera Cruz.”
Behind the admiral’s chair stood Billy Bowline, once captain of the maintop but retired because of deafness. This was a sore point to Billy, who always protested: “I kin hear everything I wants to, and I never missed a call from the day I j’ined the sarvice, and I kin hear the admiral a sight better ’n Grubb, the jirene.”[1] The admiral, though, always roared at Billy so loud that everybody in the yard could hear him bawling.