Charles Darling, you have made a bad hit this time.
If I am no more worn out than this coat is, I am fit to go to sea for a
number of years yet. And I hope to show it to a good many Frenchmen, and
take as many ships, every time they show fight, as there are buttons on
it."
"Then you will double all your captures at the Nile;" such a series of
buttons had this coat, though mostly loose upon their moorings, for his
guardian angel was not "domestic"; "but you may be trusted not to let
them drift so. You have given me a lesson in coast-defence, and now you
shall be boarded by the ladies. You possess some gifts of the tongue,
my friend, as well as great gifts of hand and eye; but I will back my
daughters to beat you there. Come up to the house. No turning of tail."
"I spoke very well in the House of Lords," said Nelson, in his simple
way, "in reply to the speech of his Majesty, and again about the
Commissioner's Bill; or at least everybody tells me so. But in the House
of Ladies I hold my tongue, because there is abundance without it."
This, however, he failed to do when the matter came to the issue; for
his godchild Horatia, more commonly called Dolly, happened to be in the
mood for taking outrageous liberties with him. She possessed very little
of that gift--most precious among women--the sense of veneration; and to
her a hero was only a man heroic in acts of utility. "He shall do it,"
she said to Faith, when she heard that he was come again; "if I have to
kiss him, he shall do it; and I don't like kissing those old men.
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