"No!" said the admiral; "but there's a fine pump of spring water outside if you feel a little thirsty, Jack; and I'll engage it shall do you more good than all the rum in the world."
"Uncle," said Charles, "I'm glad to hear you make that observation."
"What for?"
"Why, to deal candidly with you, uncle, Jack informed me that you had lately taken quite a predilection for drinking."
"Me!" cried the admiral; "why the infernal rascal, I've had to threaten him with his discharge a dozen times, at least, on that very ground, and no other."
"There's somebody calling me," said Jack. "I'm a coming! I'm a coming!" and, so he bolted out of the room, just in time to escape an inkstand, which the admiral caught up and flung after him.
"I'll strike that rascal off the ship's books this very day," muttered Admiral Bell. "The drunken vagabond, to pretend that I take anything, when all the while it's himself!"
"Well, well, I ought certainly to have suspected the quarter from whence the intelligence came; but he told it to me so circumstantially, and with such an apparent feeling of regret for the weakness into which he said you had fallen, that I really thought there might be some truth in it."
"The rascal! I've done with him from this moment; I have put up with too much from him for years past."
"I think now that you have given him a great deal of liberty, and that, with a great deal more he has taken, makes up an amount which you find it difficult to endure."