'Who's your Admiral
staying at the house on the beach?' men have inquired as they come
ashore. My husband has heard it. Tinman's got it on his brain. He
might be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman, but he 'll soon be
wanting to walk about in silk legs if he stops a bachelor. They tell me
his old mother here had a dress value twenty pound; and pomp's inherited.
Save as he may, there's his leak."
Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and
ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the
importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to
seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the
unsubstantial are vanishing. The great event of his bailiff's term of
office had become the sun of Tinman's system. He basked in its rays.
He meant to be again the proud official, royally distinguished; meantime,
though he knew not that his days were dull, he groaned under the dulness;
and, as cart or cab horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
the nature of harness when they have release to frisk in a field, it is
possible that existence was made tolerable to the jogging man by some
minutes of excitement in his bailiff's Court suit. Really to pasture on
our recollections we ought to dramatize them. There is, however, only
the testimony of a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and
those are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow classes, given to
magnify small items of fact.
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