“Nay, but Captain Fane, without our Admirals and Generals where would be the victories of peace?” objected Lady Bell, putting up her little chin shrewdly. “True, for our comfort,” admitted Captain Fane; “and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It is one thing to command even his Majesty’s flag-ship, and nail the colours to the mast if need be, and another to control the elements. There were many captains in Syracuse, but only one Archimedes. That spare stooping man is the Archimedes of the modern world.” “And he hath the air of a tradesman,” said one of the Miss Sundons softly, as if resigning herself perforce to the lamentable want of style of the modern Archimedes. “Or of an old schoolmaster,” chimed in Lady Bell mischievously, with a half inadvertent glance of approving contrast at Captain Fane’s stalwart, well-carried figure. It was a “very pretty” manly figure, though it was not that of an effeminate dandy such as Admiral Rodney had shown himself, before his debts drove him to France, and although it had not escaped the professional rolling gait of the sailor. Doubtless even so strict and wise a judge as Harry Fane was prepared to be, felt propitiated, whether he knew it or not, by the invidious womanish glance which contrasted the person of the great mechanic with that of the obscure naval officer, and awarded the advantage to the latter. “What would you have?” he said, smiling. “Sure he has the best to his share, and there is an old schoolmaster in Bolt Court, at whom we should not dare to peep, but whom ladies of quality, I am glad to say, have paid with all the coin at their command, for his generosity towards them.” “Ah! you mean the great and good Dr. Johnson,” exclaimed Lady Bell eagerly. “My Mrs. Sundon and I, we should have been proud to wait on him, on our bended knees, if we had got the opportunity. But I fear his health is failing too much for him to appear often in society. I did hope to have had a glimpse of him, though I should have half died with fear lest he had set me down, as he is a little prone to do poor fine ladies who do not take his fancy. But you would not compare a man of such erudition in letters to a mere mechanic, however ingenious in his own line?” “I should like to hear what the great honest man of letters would have to say to the imputation of superiority; I should like to hear what posterity will have to say,” exclaimed Captain Fane with lively impatience. “But I confess I have a natural weakness for the science which provides me with a compass, and the mechanics which build me a ship, so that possibly I am not a fair authority on the comparative merits of science and literature.” “Sir, the very fact of your owning to a natural weakness vouches for your impartiality as a witness,” Lady Bell declared with her quaint graciousness.