"
"That will do. That is quite enough. No wonder you have written poems,
Nelson, as you told us the last time you were here. If my son had only
got your imagination--but perhaps you know something more than you have
told me. Perhaps you have been told--"
"Never mind about that," the great sea-captain answered, turning away
as if on springs; "it is high time for me to be off again, and my chaise
has springs on her cables."
"Not she. I have ordered her to be docked. Dine with us you shall this
day, if we have to dine two hours earlier, and though Mother Cloam rage
furiously. How much longer do you suppose you can carry on at this pace?
Look at me. I have double your bodily substance; but if I went on as
you do--you remember the twenty-four-pounder old Hotcoppers put into the
launch, and fired it, in spite of all I could say to him? Well, you are
just the same. You have not got the scantling for the metal you carry
and are always working. You will either blow up, or else scuttle
yourself. Look here, how your seams are opening!" Here Admiral Darling
thrust his thumb through the ravelled seam of his old friend's coat,
which made him jump back, for he loved his old coat. "Yes, and you will
go in the very same way. I wonder how any coat lasts so much as a month,
with you inside it."
"This coat," said Nelson, who was most sweet-tempered with any one he
loved, though hot as pepper when stirred up by strangers--"this coat is
the one I wore at Copenhagen, and a sounder and kinder coat never came
on a man's back.
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