“I should like, sir, please,” said Bobbie, “to—”
“Choose a honest trade,” suggested the carpenter.
“Let the boy speak,” urged one of the other members.
“I should like to be a sailor,” said the lad.
“Ah!” said the carpenter, triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”
“Our band boys don’t often go into the navy,” said the Superintendent. “Most of them go in for the other branch of the service.”
“Jolly good thing,” said the gloomy carpenter, with his fingers in the pockets of his white waistcoat, “if all your armies and all your navies was done away with and abolished.”
“Talk sense!” advised his neighbour.
“What are they,” asked the carpenter, “but a tax on the respectable tradesmen of this country? What good are they? What do they do? That’s what I want to know.” He looked round at his colleagues with the confident air of one propounding a riddle of which none knew the answer. “Will someone kindly tell me what good the navy does? What benefit does it do me or any of us seated at this table? If all our ships was to disappear this very morning before twelve o’clock struck, should I be any the worse off?”
“Why, you silly old silly,” broke in the lad on the other side of the table, impetuously, “if that was to ’appen some foreign power would be down on us before you could wink, and you’d find yourself—”