Now, it went very much against my grain, to deliver this letter to my friend Roly—for my friend I may call him, by this time, after the things we had done, and enjoyed, together. For I had taught him several ingenuities, such as a London boy can show, of clogging the wheels of the bathing-waggons, and pouring a little tar into the shoes left on the beach by paddlers, and other devices even better; so that we had made rare larks together, and he would find it dull without me.
"All up now," I cried, as he came, at full gallop, for his answer; "the governor has done for all my chance of ever going up to your place. Look what he says! And not half of it is true. We are boilers; but we don't make dips like that."
Sir Roland was looking at a bunch of rushlights, very well done, but much older than I was—for night-lights had long superseded them—and he could not help laughing, though he tried severely. And I had talked rather largely about commerce, once or twice, when we got into abstract subjects, as we used, when the last chance of a lark was gone. "He has done it on purpose," I said, "to pull me down. Why, he might have used his new bill-heading, quite like a picture you can look at, with a palm in the middle, and an olive full of oil, and two great cannons made into candlesticks, for his Virgin-honey patent that burns like bees, and land-steam on one side, and sea-steam on the other, to show the extent of his transactions. Tell my dear lady, that wretched old thing came down, I am sure, from my grandfather. Oh, what was mother about, to let him?"
"Admirals are wilful men," replied Sir Roland, seriously regarding that vile bill-head; "and they won't always listen to their wives."
"Did I ever call him an Admiral? Did he ever say he was an Admiral? Did any of us ever tell a single lie, about it?"
"Tommy, my boy, don't be excited," Sir Roland said, as gravely as he could contrive; "I have seen a great deal of the world, though I am young; and of course I was aware, from the very first moment, that you belonged to the commercial classes; which (as I read the other day) are rapidly becoming the mainstay of England, against the wild inrush of anarchy. You know, I told you that, the other night, after we had cut the mooring-ropes of the three machines of the Radical. Very well, if you are in trade, where is the difference between big and little? The retail dealers are the loftier class, because they make less profit. I have thought about these things, for several hours, and I am not misled by what I read. And the conclusion I have come to is just this—that the retail man is of a higher class, in every way, than the wholesale one."
"But," I said, as firmly as I could say it, and proudly repressing all tendency to tears, "we are wholesale, wholesale all over. Even father can't say less than that, when he wants to run down all of us, to keep our ideas from spending."
"Never mind, Tommy, what you are," Sir Roland replied, as he buttoned up his coat; "you may be a gentleman, in any calling, if you don't run other people down. That is the surest sign of a cad; and I've never seen any sign of that, in you. Now, I must be off, like the wind, for home; because I am resolved to come back in time for you. We shall want you, all the more for this, friend Tommy."
"I won't come now, if you ask me;" I called out, as he stuck his legs round his pony; "because I shall know, you are thinking about the dips."
"Keep out your things from the rest, and have them ready. The Station-bus goes at two o'clock. I shall come with a light trap, at half-past one; and nobody will ask you about coming."