CHAPTER II.

I START IN LIFE AS AN EMINENT PERSON

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Mr. Scougall was a lean, strident man who, if he lectured us often, whipped us on the whole with judgment and when we deserved it. So we bore him no grudge. But neither did we love him nor take any lively interest in him as a bridegroom, and I was startled to find these feelings shared by Mr. George in the porter's box when I discussed the news with him.  "I'm to have a new suit of clothes," said Mr. George, "but whoever gets Scougall, he's no catch." This sounded blasphemous, while it gave me a sort of fearful joy. I reported it, under seal of secrecy, to Miss Plinlimmon. "Naval men, my dear Harry," was her comment, "are notoriously blunt and outspoken, even when retired upon a pension; perhaps, indeed, if anything, more so. It is in consequence of this habit that they have sometimes performed their grandest feats, as, for instance, when Horatio Nelson put his spy-glass up to his blind eye. I advise you to do the same and treat Mr. George as a chartered heart of oak, without remembering his indiscretions to repeat them."  She went on to tell me that sailor-men were beloved in Plymouth and allowed to do pretty well as they pleased; and how, quite recently, a Quaker lady had been stopped in Bedford Street by a Jack Tar who said he had sworn to kiss her.  "Thee must be quick about it, then," said the Quaker lady. And he was.

I suppose this anecdote encouraged me to be more familiar with Mr. George. At any rate, I confided to him next day that I thought of being a soldier.

"Do you know what we used to say in the Navy?" he answered.  "We used to say, 'A friend before a messmate, a messmate before a shipmate, a shipmate before a dog, and a dog before a soldier.'"

"You think," said I, somewhat discouraged, "that the Navy would be a better opening for me?"

"Ay," he answered again, eyeing me gloomily; "that is, if so be ye can't contrive to get to jail."  He cast a glance down upon his jury-leg and patted the straps of it with his open palm.  "The leg, now, that used to be here—I left it in a French prison called Jivvy, and often I thinks to myself, 'That there leg is having better luck than the rest of me.'  And here's another curious thing. What d'ye think they call it in France when you remember a person in your will?"

I hadn't a notion, and said so.

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