“WERE SEATED AT A TABLE.”
The captain was not to be seen. Mr. Johnson shook me cordially by the hand and assured my father that I had the making of a sailor in me. All the midshipmen had hurried ashore with the exception of Kennet, who was below, sitting on a chest smoking his pipe when I descended to say farewell to such of the lads as I could find in the cabin. He pretended to weep as he squeezed my hand.
I said, “Kennet, are you not going ashore?”
“Yeth,” he said; “but I muth finith my pipe firtht.”
“Kennet,” I said, “come and dine with my father and me. He has ordered a good dinner to be in readiness for us at the Brunswick Hotel.”
He threw down the sooty clay pipe he had been smoking and jumped up.
“Rockafellar,” he said, “I alwayth thaid you were a brick!”
A little later, my father, Kennet, and myself were seated at a table, white with damask and sparkling with glass, in a window overlooking the Docks. Oh! the excellence of the roast beef! Oh! the sweetness of the cauliflower with its melted butter! Oh! the incomparable flavour of the mealy potatoes!