"Is that all you can remember about her?"
"I can remember," said the old man, "a wonderful lot of things at times. You mustn't ask any man to remember all at once. Not at his best, you mustn't, and I doubt I am hardly at what you may call my tip-top ripest—yet. Wait a bit, young man; wait a bit. I've been to a many ports and carved figureheads for a many ships, and they got cast away, one after the other, but dear to memory still, and paid for. Like Sergeant Goslett. A handsome man he was, with curly brown hair, like yours, young gentleman. I remember how he sang a song in this very house when Caroline—or was it her sister?—had it, and I forget whether it was Bunker married her sister or after Caroline's baby was born, which was when the child's father was dead. A beautiful evening we had."
Caroline's baby, Harry surmised, was himself.
"Where was Caroline's baby born?" Harry asked.
"Where should he be? Why, o' course, in his mother's own house."
"Why should he be born in his mother's own house? I did not know that his mother had a house."
The old man looked at him with pity.
"Young man," he said, "you know nothing. Your ignorance is shameful."
"But why?"
"Enough said, young gentleman," replied Mr. Maliphant with dignity. "Enough said: youth should not sport with age; it doth not become gray hairs to—to——"