a reasonable knowledge of our regulations by this time."
Peters had become a servitor of the club at the age of forty-four, and therefore every member looked upon him as having spent his infancy within the walls of the Ironside Service Club.
"Oh, no, Sir Stonage, I have broken none of the rules. I leave the club without a stain on my character," replied Peters, mixing in his reply a phrase that lingered in his mind from the records of the courts. "Mr. Norton dismisses me, sir, because I am too old for further service."
"What!" roared the admiral in a voice of thunder.
Several members in different parts of the room looked up with a shade of annoyance on their countenances. Most of them were deaf, and nothing less than the firing of a cannon in the room would ordinarily have disturbed them, but the admiral's shout of astonishment would have been heard from the deck of the flagship to the most remote vessel in the fleet.
"Too old! Too old!" he continued, "too old for service! Why, you can't be a day more than eighty-six!"
"Eighty-six last March, sir," corroborated Peters, with a sigh.
"This is preposterous!" cried the admiral, with mounting rage. "Go and get my stick at once, Peters. We shall see if servants are to be discharged in the very prime of their usefulness."
Peters shuffled off, and returned from the cloak-room with the stout cane. The admiral took a gulp of his liquor without diluting it, and Peters, handing him his stick, stood by, not daring to make any ostentatious display of assisting Sir Stonage to rise, for the old warrior resented any suggestion that the infirmities natural to his time of life were upon him, or even approaching him. But on this occasion, to Peters's amazement, the admiral, firmly
"Why, you can't be a day more than eighty-six!"
planting his stick on the right-hand side of the deep chair, thrust his left hand within the linked arm of Peters, and so assisted himself to his feet, or rather to his one foot and wooden stump. Peters followed him with anxious solicitude as he thumped towards the door; then the admiral, apparently regretting his temporary weakness in accepting the arm of his underling, turned savagely upon him, and cried in wrath:
"Don't hover about me in that disgustingly silly way, Peters. You'll be saying I'm an old man next."
"Oh, no, sir," murmured the abject Peters.
The admiral stumped into the committee room of the club, and rang a hand-bell which was upon the table, for no such modern improvement as electricity was anywhere to be found within the club. When the bell was answered the admiral said shortly:
"Send Mr. Norton to me, here."
Mr. Norton came presently in, a clean-cut, smooth-shaven, alert man, with the air of one who knew his business. Nevertheless, Mr. Norton seemed to have the uneasy impression that he was a man out of place. He looked like a smug, well-contented, prosperous grocer, who was trying to assume the dignified air of a Bank of England porter. He bowed to so important a person as the chairman of the House Committee with a deference that was not unmixed with groveling; but the admiral lost no time in preliminaries, jumping at once to the matter that occupied his mind.
"I understand, sir, that you have dismissed Peters."
"Yes, Sir Stonage," replied the manager.
"And I have heard a reason given of such absurdity that I find some difficulty in crediting it; so I now give you a chance to explain. Why have you dismissed Peters?"
"On account of hage, Sir Stonage," replied the manager, cowering somewhat, fearing stormy weather ahead.
