Temple was enraptured with him.  He declared he had been thinking seriously for a long time of entering the Navy, and his admiration of the captain must have given him an intuition of his character, for he persuaded me to send to Riversley for our evening-dress clothes, appearing in which at the dinner-table, we received the captain’s compliments, as being gentlemen who knew how to attire ourselves to suit an occasion.  The occasion, Squire Gregory said, happened to him too often for him to distinguish it by the cut of his coat.

’I observe, nevertheless, Greg, that you have a black tie round your neck instead of a red one,’ said the captain.

‘Then it came there by accident,’ said Squire Gregory.

’Accident!  There’s no such thing as accident.  If I wander out of the house with a half dozen or so in me, and topple into the brook, am I accidentally drowned?  If a squall upsets my ship, is she an accidental residue of spars and timber and old iron?  If a woman refuses me, is that an accident?  There’s a cause for every disaster:  too much cargo, want of foresight, want of pluck.  Pooh! when I’m hauled prisoner into a foreign port in time of war, you may talk of accidents.  Mr. Harry Richmond, Mr. Temple, I have the accidental happiness of drinking to your healths in a tumbler of hock wine.  Nominative, hic, haec, hoc.’

Squire Gregory carried on the declension, not without pride.  The Vocative confused him.

‘Claret will do for the Vocative,’ said the captain, gravely; ’the more so as there is plenty of it at your table, Greg.  Ablative hoc, hac, hoc, which sounds as if the gentleman had become incapable of speech beyond the name of his wine.  So we will abandon the declension of the article for a dash of champagne, which there’s no declining, I hope.  Wonderful men, those Romans!  They fought their ships well, too.  A question to you, Greg.  Those heathen Pagan dogs had a religion that encouraged them to swear.  Now, my experience of life pronounces it to be a human necessity to rap out an oath here and there.  What do you say?’

Squire Gregory said:  ‘Drinking, and no thinking, at dinner, William.’  The captain pledged him.

’I ’ll take the opportunity, as we’re not on board ship, of drinking to you, sir, now,’ Temple addressed the captain, whose face was resplendent; and he bowed, and drank, and said,

‘As we are not on board ship?  I like you!’

Temple thanked him for the compliment.

’No compliment, my lad.  You see me in my weakness, and you have the discernment to know me for something better than I seem.  You promise to respect me on my own quarter-deck.  You are of the right stuff.  Do I speak correctly, Mr. Harry?’

‘Temple is my dear friend,’ I replied.

’And he would not be so if not of the right stuff!  Good!  That ’s a way of putting much in little.  By Jove! a royal style.’

‘And Harry’s a royal fellow!’ said Temple.