"Ten-thirty's the next dose, Commodore," says he as he starts off.
"It is, eh, you wall-eyed deck swab?" howls the Commodore. "If you mix any more of that infant food for me I'll skin you alive, and sew you up hind side before. Do you hear that, you?"
I was wearin' a broad grin when the old Commodore turns around to me.
"If that fellow keeps this up," says he, "I shall lose my temper some day. Ever drink medicated milk, eh? Ugh! It tastes the way burnt feathers smell. And I'm dosed with it eight times a day! Think of it, milk! But what makes me mad is to have it ladled out to me by that long-faced, fish-eyed food destroyer, whose only joy in life is to hunt me down and gloat over my misery. Oh, I'll get square with him yet, sir; I swear I will."
"I wish you luck," says I.
"Who are you, anyway?" says he.
"Nobody much," says I, "so there's two of us. I'm livin' in the cottage across the way."
"The deuce you say!" says he. "Then you're Shorty McCabe, aren't you?"
"You're on," says I. "How'd you guess it?"
Well, it seems one of my reg'lars was a partner of his son-in-law, who owned the big place, and they'd been talkin' about me just the day before. After that it didn't take long for the Commodore and me to get a line on each other, and when I finds out he's Roaring Dick, the nervy old chap that stood out on the front porch of his ship all through the muss at Santiago Bay and hammered the daylights out of the Spanish fleet, I gives him the hand.