“The fact is it serves me right,” continued the admiral, advancing to his accustomed seat at the table; “hard-worked drudges of my kind ought never to trust themselves in the clutches of idle swells like you—they never know when they’ll get out of them. Here’s a letter from the Admiralty, blowing me up for not sending in that report I was to have drawn up on the Russian fleet; and quite right, too—only it’s you who ought to get the blowing up, not me.”
“But, uncle, I thought you had settled to remain till Thursday,” said Clide; “you said you would yesterday.”
“One often says a thing yesterday that one has to unsay to-day,” retorted the admiral, clearing for action by sweeping his letters to one side; “I’m going by the 3.20. I tell you I am, Harness!”
“Well, I’ve not said anything to the contrary, have I?”
“But you needn’t be trying to circumvent me, to make me late for the train, or that sort of thing. I’m up to your dodges now. Ryder will be on the look-out; he’s packing up already.”
“I must say its rather shabby behavior to Lady Anwyll,” observed the baronet; “the dinner and dance on Wednesday are entirely for you and Clide.”
“Clide must go and make the best of it for me; an old fellow like me is no great loss at a dinner, and I don’t suppose she counted much on me for the dance. How much longer do you intend to stay here, eh?” This was to his nephew.
“What’s that to you?” said Sir Simon, interrupting Clide, who was about to answer; “you’d like him to do as you are doing—set the county astir to entertain him, and then decamp before anything comes off.”
But the admiral was not to be moved from his determination by any sense of ill-behavior to the county. He started by the 3.20. Sir Simon and Clide went to see him off, and called at The Lilies on their way back.