“Won’t refuse a good offer,” replied Ben, “been too long in the sarvice for that—­and you’ve seen sarvice, too, I think,” continued Ben, looking my father full in the face.

“Chop from a French officer,” replied my father; after a pause, he added, “but he didn’t live to tell of it.”

Ben took one of the offered pipes, filled, and was soon very busy puffing away, alongside of my father.

CHAPTER FIVE

     My Father and Mother meet after an absence of Six Years—­She
     dis-covers that he is no longer a Coxswain but a Boatswain’s Mate.

While my father and Ben are thus engaged, I will give the reader a description of the latter.

Ben was a very tall, broad-shouldered old fellow, but stooping a little from age.  I should think he must have been at least sixty, if not more; still he was a powerful, sinewy man.  His nose, which was no small one, had been knocked on one side, as he told me, by the flukes (i.e., tail) of a whale, which cut in half a boat of which he was steersman.  He had a very large mouth, with very few teeth in it, having lost them by the same accident; which, to use his own expression, had at the time “knocked his figure-head all to smash.”  He had sailed many years in the whale fisheries, had at last been pressed, and served as quartermaster on board of a frigate for eight or nine years, when his ankle was broken by the rolling of a spar in a gale of wind.  He was in consequence invalided for Greenwich.  He walked stiff on this leg, and usually supported himself with a thick stick.  Ben had noticed me from the time that my mother first came to Fisher’s Alley.  He was the friend of my early days, and I was very much attached to him.

A minute or two afterward my father pushed the pot of porter to him.  Ben drank, and then said: 

“Those be nice children, both on ’em—­I know them well.”

“And what kind of a craft is the mother?” replied my father.

“Oh! why, she’s a little queer at times—­she’s always so mighty particular about gentility.”

“Do you know why?” replied my father.

Ben shook his head.

“Then I’ll tell you:  because she was once a lady’s ladies’ maid.”

“Well,” replied Ben, “I don’t understand much about titles and nobility, and those sort of things; but I’m sorry she’s gone down in the world, for though a little particular about gentility, she’s a good sort of woman in her way, and keeps up her character, and earns an honest livelihood.”

“So much the better for her,” replied my father, who refilled his pipe and continued to smoke in silence.

My mother had gone into the back kitchen to wash, which was the cause (not having been summoned) of her being so long absent.

Virginia, who had become quite sociable, was passing her little fingers through my father’s large whiskers, while he every now and then put his pipe out of his mouth to kiss her.  I had the porter-pot on my knees, my father having told me to take a swig, when my mother entered the room.