This discovery introduced a thousand questions, in the course of which the old gentleman learned the situation of his friend's family, and discharged innumerable execrations upon the ingratitude and injustice of the ministry, which had failed to provide for the son of such a brave soldier. Nor was his friendship confined to such ineffectual expressions; he that same evening signified to Peregrine a desire of doing something for his friend. This inclination was so much praised, encouraged, and promoted by his godson, and even supported by his councilor Hatchway, that our hero was empowered to present him with a sum of money sufficient to purchase a commission. Though nothing could be more agreeable to Pickle than this permission, he was afraid that Godfrey's scrupulous disposition would hinder him from subjecting himself to any such obligation; and therefore proposed that he should be decoyed into his own interest by a feigned story, in consequence of which he would be prevailed upon to accept of the money, as a debt which the commodore had contracted of his father at sea. Trunnion made wry faces at this expedient, the necessity of which he could not conceive, without calling in question the common sense of Gauntlet; as he took it for granted that such offers as those were not to be rejected on any consideration whatever. Besides, he could not digest an artifice, by which he himself must own that he had lived so many years without manifesting the least intention of doing justice to his creditor. All these objections, however, were removed by the zeal and rhetoric of Peregrine, who represented that it would be impossible to befriend him on any other terms; that his silence hitherto would be imputed to his want of information touching the circumstances and condition of his friend; and that his remembering and insisting upon discharging the obligation, after such an interval of time, when the whole affair was in oblivion, would be the greatest compliment he could pay to his own honour and integrity. Thus persuaded, he took an opportunity of Gauntlet's being alone with him to broach the affair, telling the young man that his father had advanced a sum of money for him, when they sailed together, on account of the mess, as well as to stop the mouth of a clamorous creditor at Portsmouth; and that the said sum, with interest, amounted to about four hundred pounds, which he would now, with great thankfulness, repay.