“You doubt my assertion! Wait until you have been married as long as I have, thirty years or more, and you’ll understand what’s what. You are not married, I conclude, Captain Rogers?”
“I have the happiness of being so, although we poor sailors are not allowed to carry our wives and families with us, as you military men have the privilege of doing.”
“That will be a disappointment to Eugenia and Angelica,” observed the major, apparently speaking to himself. “They fully speculated on your being a bachelor. You have some bachelor officers, however, captain?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Jack laughing; “my three lieutenants are all unmarried, and so are the rest of the officers, with the exception of the doctor and paymaster.”
“That’s some consolation, at all events. If there’s one thing I have at heart more than another, it is to see my charming daughters well married.”
“I wish you every success in so laudable an object,” said Jack, “but it is a matter in which I should decline to interfere with respect to my officers. Indeed they are all too young to take upon themselves the responsibilities of married life. In my opinion a naval officer should not venture to fall in love until he is thirty at least, if he intends to get on in the service, and it would be much better to wait a few years beyond that.”
“Ah, but my daughters would not consider them too young,” said the major. “Angelica once engaged herself to a young gentleman of seventeen, and would have married him too had not his father, who objected to the match, sent him off up the country, and the poor girl for a month at least could not hold up her head. It was not until a fresh regiment arrived that she in any way recovered her usual buoyant spirits, and had no less than three admirers at once dangling after her. One was so old that she could not make up her mind to accept him. Another was over head and ears in debt, and asked me to pay his bills, on condition that he would take my daughter off my hands, and a third had, I found out, an unacknowledged wife. So you see my sweet Angelica is perfectly free to give her heart and hand to the first person who asks her.”
The major, as he made these revelations, did not appear at all aware of the effect they were likely to produce on his auditor, who, as may be supposed, found it difficult to offer any remark on some of them.
“I think I may now venture below, as time has been given for the storm which raged in a certain region to calm down,” said the major, who was beginning to feel a little tired from so long pacing the deck.
Jack advised him by all means to return to his cabin. He wanted, indeed, to enjoy a good hearty fit of laughter by himself, as he felt every instant ready to explode. He somewhat astonished Tom, who was on deck, when he at length gave way to his feelings as the major’s head disappeared below the deck.