Pew. Rum, ma’am, rum; and a bit o’ supper.
Mrs. Drake. And a bed to follow, I shouldn’t wonder!
Pew. And a bed to follow: if you please.
Mrs. Drake. This is the “Admiral Benbow,” a respectable house, and receives none but decent company; and I’ll ask you to go somewhere else, for I don’t like the looks of you.
Pew. Turn me away? Why, Lord love you, I’m David Pew—old David Pew—him as was Benbow’s own particular cox’n. You wouldn’t turn away old Pew from the sign of his late commander’s ’ed? Ah, my British female, you’d have used me different if you’d seen me in the fight! (There laid old Benbow, both his legs shot off, in a basket, and the blessed spy-glass at his eye to that same hour: a picter, ma’am, of naval daring: when a round shot come, and took and knocked a bucketful of shivers right into my poor daylights. “Damme,” says the Admiral, “is that old Pew, my old Pew?” he says.—“It’s old Pew, sir,” says the first lootenant, “worse luck,” he says.—“Then damme,” says Admiral Benbow, “if that’s how they serve a lion-’arted seaman, damme if I care to live,” he says; and, ma’am, he laid down his spy-glass.)
Mrs. Drake. Blind man, I don’t fancy you, and that’s the truth; and I’ll thank you to take yourself off.
Pew. Thirty years have I fought for country and king, and now in my blind old age I’m to be sent packing from a measly public-’ouse? Mark ye, ma’am, if I go, you take the consequences. Is this a inn? Or hain’t it? If it is a inn, then by act of parleyment, I’m free to sling my ’ammick. Don’t you forget: this is a act of parleyment job, this is. You look out.
Mrs. Drake. Why, what’s to do with the man and his acts of parliament? I don’t want to fly in the face of an act of parliament, not I. If what you say is true——
Pew. True? If there’s anything truer than a act of parleyment—Ah! you ask the beak. True? I’ve that in my ’art as makes me wish it wasn’t.
Mrs. Drake. I don’t like to risk it. I don’t like your looks, and you’re more sea-lawyer than seaman to my mind. But I’ll tell you what: if you can pay, you can stay. So there.