“Are you looking for anybody?” demanded Captain Nugent, at last.

“No,” said Mr. Kybird, looking at him over the top of his paper.

“What have you come here for, then?” inquired the captain.

“I come ‘ere to drink two o’ gin cold,” returned Mr. Kybird, with a dignity befitting the occupation.

“Well, suppose you drink it somewhere else,” suggested the captain.

Mr. Kybird had another supposition to offer.  “Suppose I don’t?” he remarked.  “I’m a respect-able British tradesman, and my money is as good as yours.  I’ve as much right to be here as you ’ave.  I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of!”

“And you never will,” said Captain Cooper’s friend, grimly, “not if you live to be a hundred.”

Mr. Kybird looked surprised at the tribute.  “Thankee,” he said, gratefully.

“Well, we don’t want you here,” said Captain Nugent.  “We prefer your room to your company.”

Mr. Kybird leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into an expression of withering contempt.  Then he took up a glass and drank, and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had made free with the speaker’s whisky.

“Don’t apologize,” interrupted the captain; “it’s soon remedied.”

He took the glass up gingerly and flung it with a crash into the fireplace.  Then he rang the bell.

“I’ve smashed a dirty glass,” he said, as the bar-man entered.  “How much?”

The man told him, and the captain, after a few stern remarks about privacy and harpies, left the room with his friends, leaving the speechless Mr. Kybird gazing at the broken glass and returning evasive replies to the inquiries of the curious Charles.

He finished his gin and water slowly.  For months he had been screwing up his courage to carry that room by assault, and this was the result.  He had been insulted almost in the very face of Charles, a youth whose reputation as a gossip was second to none in Sunwich.

“Do you know what I should do if I was you?” said that worthy, as he entered the room again and swept up the broken glass.

“I do not,” said Mr. Kybird, with lofty indifference.

“I shouldn’t come ’ere again, that’s what I should do,” said Charles, frankly.  “Next time he’ll throw you in the fireplace.”

“Ho,” said the heated Mr. Kybird.  “Ho, will he?  I’d like to see ’im.  I’ll make ’im sorry for this afore I’ve done with ’im.  I’ll learn ’im to insult a respectable British tradesman.  I’ll show him who’s who.”

“What’ll you do?” inquired the other.

“Never you mind,” said Mr. Kybird, who was not in a position to satisfy his curiosity—­“never you mind.  You go and get on with your work, Charles, and p’r’aps by the time your moustache ’as grown big enough to be seen, you’ll ’ear something.”

“I ’eard something the other day,” said the bar-man, musingly; “about you it was, but I wouldn’t believe it.”