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The steward's handsome face, usually smoothly shaven with the most extreme care, was to-day covered with a stubbly beard, and the old man looked sad and worn, as he began to tell Wilhelm what had occurred in his mistress's house since the evening of the day before. "Years may make a hot-tempered person weaker, but not calmer," said the Italian, continuing his story.
He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune, and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season. 'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the steward's cabin, he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.
So, on this morning that Semper Idem was to leave the hospital, hale and hearty, Doctor Bicknell's geniality was in nowise disturbed by the steward's report, and he proceeded cheerfully to bring order out of the chaos of a child's body which had been ground and crunched beneath the wheels of an electric car.
"Yes, dear Gelid, so sure as you have been landed down on your posteriors now ah you shall be handed down to your posterity hereafter, by that pestilent little scamp Cringle. Ah, Tom, I know you. Paul, Paul, it will be paulo postfuturum with you, my lad." Here we were interrupted by my steward's entering with his tallow face. "Dinner on the table, sir." We adjourned accordingly.
I reached the steward's pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry.
It is true that the steward's false pride had roused his indignation, and who can listen calmly to any comment on a stain on his birth? But the appeal of this miserable father's daughter had gone to his heart.
As I knew where the purser's steward's room was, having seen it when down in the cock-pit with the Trotters, I went down immediately. "Mr Purser's Steward," said I, "let me have a cocked-hat and a dirk immediately." "Very good, sir," replied he, and he wrote an order upon a slip of paper, which he handed to me.
The burly doctor looked surprised at this concession on the part of the steward, who was a man tenacious of every perquisite and one who had made much complaint about the crowded condition of the hospital wards and small rooms ever since the frozen soldiers had come in. All the same the doctor asked for no explanation, but gladly availed himself of the steward's offer.
The steward's features had calmed down at these last words, and he answered with less excitement than before: "I must request you to chain up your dog, or to shut it up, or in some way to keep it from mischief." "That is pretty strong!" cried the Emperor. "It is only a reasonable demand, and I must stand by it," replied Keraunus decidedly.
A further proof to Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow. His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.
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