“You were goin’ to say somethin’?” asked the captain, affably.
“You know my friend, Mr. Fitzboodle, I believe?” said I; the fact is, I really did not know what to say.
“Some mistake—think not.”
“He is a member of the Flag Club,” I remarked, looking my young fellow hard in the face.
“I ain’t. There’s a set of cads in that club that will say anything.”
“You may not know him, sir, but he seemed to know you very well. Are we to have any tea, children?” I say, flinging myself down on an easy chair, taking up a magazine and adopting an easy attitude, though I daresay my face was as red as a turkey-cock’s, and I was boiling over with rage.
As we had a very good breakfast and a profuse luncheon at Shrublands, of course we could not support nature till dinner-time without a five-o’clock tea; and this was the meal for which I pretended to ask. Bedford, with his silver kettle, and his buttony satellite, presently brought in this refection, and of course the children bawled out to him—
“Bedford—Bedford! uncle mistook Mr. Batchelor for you.”
“I could not be mistaken for a more honest man, Pop,” said I. And the bearer of the tea-urn gave me a look of gratitude and kindness which, I own, went far to restore my ruffled equanimity.