He will have another surprise. They mean to drag him
along with them on board the ship straight away. Rescue work. Just
think of Roderick Anthony, the son of a gentleman, after all . . . "
He gave me a little shock. I thought he was going to say the "son of the
poet" as usual; but his mind was not running on such vanities now. His
unspoken thought must have gone on "and uncle of my girls." I suspect
that he had been roughly handled by Captain Anthony up there, and the
resentment gave a tremendous fillip to the slow play of his wits. Those
men of sober fancy, when anything rouses their imaginative faculty, are
very thorough. "Just think!" he cried. "The three of them crowded into
a four-wheeler, and Anthony sitting deferentially opposite that
astonished old jail-bird!"
The good little man laughed. An improper sound it was to come from his
manly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the least
thing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affair
sentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. His brother-in-
law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore people, a
perfect philistine with a heart like a flint.
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