"My name, sir, is Phineas Fett--"

He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant
ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty--a
comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative.
In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison,
sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)."

"There was a Phineas Pett, a great shipbuilder for the Navy in King
Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened
after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy."

"You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves
the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissionership--whatever
the duties it may carry--would be the very thing, or a
storekeepership, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that
shipping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed
the offing. I know not what exact distance constitutes an offing.
My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the
scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar."

He paused again, glanced up at my father, and--on a nod of
encouragement--continued--

"The nuisance is, I was born in the Midlands--to be precise, at West
Bromicheham--the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of artificial
jewellery. The only whiff of the brine that ever penetrated my
father's office came wafted through an off-channel of his trade.
He did an intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be