The captain was very angry. 'What,' said he, turning to us, 'what does
the squire mean by telling an officer of the Royal Navy that he is
conducting his wife to a tradesmen's Ball?'

Julia threatened malicious doings for the insult. She and the squire had
a controversy upon the explication of the word gentleman, she describing
my father's appearance and manners to the life. 'Now listen to me,
squire. A gentleman, I say, is one you'd say, if he wasn't born a duke,
he ought to have been, and more shame to the title! He turns the key of
a lady's heart with a twinkle of his eye. He 's never mean--what he has
is yours. He's a true friend; and if he doesn't keep his word, you know
in a jiffy it's the fault of affairs; and stands about five feet eleven:
he's a full-blown man': and so forth.

The squire listened, and perspired at finding the object of his
abhorrence crowned thus in the unassailable realms of the abstract.
Julia might have done it more elegantly; but her husband was rapturous
over her skill in portraiture, and he added: 'That's a gentleman, squire;
and that 's a man pretty sure to be abused by half the world.'

'Three-quarters, William,' said the squire; 'there's about the
computation for your gentleman's creditors, I suspect.'

'Ay, sir; well,' returned the captain, to whom this kind of fencing in
the dark was an affliction, 'we make it up in quality--in quality.'

'I 'll be bound you do,' said the squire; 'and so you will so long as
you 're only asked to dance to the other poor devils' fiddling.'

Captain Bulsted bowed. 'The last word to you, squire.'