You can imagine how excited I was, and I had to stand a sardine supper that night down in the Royal Oak's gun-room.
I knew, too, how frightfully delighted they would be at home, and the very next mail brought a fiver from my Pater.
Pat Jones happened to have been sent to my ship as one of the quarter-masters, and he was just as delighted as I was, and I tried to make him share the fiver with me, but he wouldn't.
However, I know that the Pater is going to look after him and give him a good billet whenever he leaves the service, so that will be all right.
Well, Milly was married in August, up in London, and as the Royal Oak happened to be in Portland I managed to get leave, and went up to see the wedding. It was a jolly grand affair, and there were any number of old friends there.
I met Captain Cummins the day before, looking in at a jeweller's shop in Regent Street, with his hands in his pockets and a toothpick in his mouth. He had such a melancholy, comic-looking expression, and he chuckled, just as he always did when he caught sight of me, and took me into the shop to help him to choose something for Milly.
It was a thing she could stick in her hair if she wanted to, or she could divide it in three and fasten it round her neck by a chain, with the big piece under her chin if she wanted to wear it like that. I know he must have given a tremendous amount for it.
He gave me lunch at a swagger club, but didn't talk much. He had just been given command of a ship on the Cape of Good Hope station, and was going to commission her in a week's time.
"Busy laying in a stock of toothpicks, youngster," he chuckled.
I think he was rather down in his luck.