For I bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too. "Cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em," _I_ said, but McCullough he shied, And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde. And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair, Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square. But McCullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all, And Brussels and Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall, And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light. But McCullough he died in the Sixties, and---- Well, I'm dying to-night.... I knew--_I_ knew what was coming, when we bid on the _Byfleet's_ keel. They piddled and piffled with iron: I'd given my orders for steel. Steel and the first expansions. It paid, I tell you, it paid, When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade. And they asked me how I did it, and I gave 'em the Scripture text, "You keep your light so shining a little in front o' the next!" They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. Then came the armour-contracts, but that was McCullough's side; He was always best in the Foundry, but better, perhaps, he died. I went through his private papers; the notes was plainer than print; And I'm no fool to finish if a man'll give me a hint. (I remember his widow was angry.) So I saw what the drawings meant, And I started the six-inch rollers, and it paid me sixty per cent. Sixty per cent _with_ failures, and more than twice we could do, And a quarter-million to credit, and I saved it all for you. I thought--it doesn't matter--you seemed to favour your ma, But you're nearer forty than thirty, and I know the kind you are. Harrer an' Trinity College! I ought to ha' sent you to sea-- But I stood you an education, an' what have you done for me? The things I knew was proper you wouldn't thank me to give, And the things I knew was rotten you said was the way to live; For you muddled with books and pictures, an' china an' etchin's an' fans, And your rooms at college was beastly--more like a whore's than a man's-- Till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone, And she gave you your social nonsense; but where's that kid o' your own? I've seen your carriages blocking the half of the Cromwell Road, But never the doctor's brougham to help the missus unload. (So there isn't even a grandchild, an' the Gloster family's done.) Not like your mother, she isn't. _She_ carried her freight each run. But they died, the pore little beggars! At sea she had 'em--they died. Only you, an' you stood it; you haven't stood much beside--