“Hush!” says I; “don’t say it.”
“I will!” says he.
“Don’t!” I pleaded.
“You is,” he declared, “a gentleman!”
The night and the abominable revelations of it were ended for my uncle and me in this way....
And so it came about that the Honorable was troubled no more by our demands, whatever the political necessities that might assail him, whatever the sins of other days, the black youth of him, that might fairly beset and harass him. He was left in peace, to follow his career, restored to the possessions my uncle had wrested from him, in so far as we were able to make restitution. There was no more of it: we met him afterwards, in genial intercourse, but made no call upon his moneybags, as you may well believe. My uncle and I made a new partnership: that of Top & Callaway, of which you may have heard, for the honesty of our trade and the worth of the schooners we build. He is used to taking my hand, upon the little finger of which I still wear the seal-ring he was doubtful of in the days when Tom Bull inspected it. “A D for Dannie,” says he, “an’ a C for Callaway, an’ betwixt the two,” says he, “lyin’ snug as you like, is a T for Top! An’ that’s 343 the way I lies,” says he, “ol’ Top betwixt the Dannie an’ the Callaway. An’ as for the business in trade an’ schooners that there little ol’ damned Chesterfieldian young Dannie haves builded from a paddle-punt, with Judy t’ help un,” says he, “why don’t ye be askin’ me!” And the business I have builded is good, and the wife I have is good, and the children are good. I have no more to wish for than my uncle and wife and children. ’Tis a delight, when the day’s work is done, to sit at table, as we used to do when I was a child, with the geometrical gentleman framed in their tempestuous sea beyond, and to watch my uncle, overcome by Judith’s persuasion, in his old age, sip his dram o’ hot rum. The fire glows, and the maid approves, and my uncle, with his ailing timber comfortably bestowed, beams largely upon us.
“Jus’ a nip,” says he. “Jus’ a wee nip o’ the best Jamaica afore I goes t’ bed.”
I pour the dram.
“For the stomach’s sake, Dannie,” says he, with a gravity that twinkles against his will, “accordin’ t’ the Apostle.”