“If knuckles could do it, I should have brained him, sir,” said Robert.

“You struck him, and you got the best of it?”

“He got the worst of it any way, and will again.”

“Then the devil take you for a fool! why did you go and drink I could understand it if you got licked.  Drown your memory, then, if that filthy soaking’s to your taste; but why, when you get the prize, we’ll say, you go off headlong into a manure pond?—­There! except that you’re a damned idiot!” Jonathan struck the air, as to observe that it beat him, but for the foregoing elucidation:  thundering afresh, “Why did you go and drink?”

“I went, sir, I went—­why did I go?” Robert slapped his hand despairingly to his forehead.  “What on earth did I go for?—­because I’m at sea, I suppose.  Nobody cares for me.  I’m at sea, and no rudder to steer me.  I suppose that’s it.  So, I drank.  I thought it best to take spirits on board.  No; this was the reason—­I remember:  that lady, whoever she was, said something that stung me.  I held the fellow under her eyes, and shook him, though she was begging me to let him off.  Says she—­but I’ve drunk it clean out of my mind.”

“There, go in and look at yourself in the glass,” said Jonathan.

“Give me your hand first,”—­Robert put his own out humbly.

“I’ll be hanged if I do,” said Jonathan firmly.  “Bed and board you shall have while I’m alive, and a glass to look at yourself in; but my hand’s for decent beasts.  Move one way or t’ other:  take your choice.”

Seeing Robert hesitate, he added, “I shall have a damned deal more respect for you if you toddle.”  He waved his hand away from the premises.

“I’m sorry you’ve taken so to swearing of late, sir,” said Robert.

“Two flints strike fire, my lad.  When you keep distant, I’m quiet enough in my talk to satisfy your aunt Anne.”

“Look here, sir; I want to make use of you, so I’ll go in.”

“Of course you do,” returned Jonathan, not a whit displeased by his son’s bluntness; “what else is a father good for?  I let you know the limit, and that’s a brick wall; jump it, if you can.  Don’t fancy it’s your aunt Jane you’re going in to meet.”

Robert had never been a favourite with his aunt Anne, who was Jonathan’s housekeeper.

“No, poor old soul! and may God bless her in heaven!” he cried.

“For leaving you what you turned into a thundering lot of liquor to consume—­eh?”

“For doing all in her power to make a man of me; and she was close on it—­kind, good old darling, that she was!  She got me with that money of hers to the best footing I’ve been on yet—­bless her heart, or her memory, or whatever a poor devil on earth may bless an angel for!  But here I am.”

The fever in Robert blazed out under a pressure of extinguishing tears.

“There, go along in,” said Jonathan, who considered drunkenness to be the main source of water in a man’s eyes.  “It’s my belief you’ve been at it already this morning.”