Oh! no."
"I say, come, come; you're too knowing. You're trying to knock a pet
scheme of mine on the head."
The old man was genuinely concerned, and he felt as if some prop had
been knocked away from him. But his sweet niece soon brought him round.
She had scared his vanity on purpose, and she now applied the antidote.
"Supposing you give us two ships, you give yourself a better memorial
than poor Alleyn of Dulwich, or Roan of Greenwich. Dear uncle, a charity
which can be enjoyed by the idle is soon forgotten, and the pious
founder is no more than a weed round the base of his own monument; he
has not even a name. But you may actually see your own memorial working
good long, long before you die, and you may see exactly how things will
go on when your time is over. When you make out your deed of gift, exact
the condition that one vessel must always be called after you, no matter
how long or how often the ships are renewed. Sir James Roche can advise
you about that. Place your portrait in the ship, and make some such
provision as that she shall always carry a flag with your name, if you
want to flaunt it, you proud thing! Then something like, at any rate,
three thousand sufferers will associate your name with their happiness
and cure every year; and they will say in every port in England, 'I was
cured on the _Robert Cassall,'_ or 'I should have lost that hand,' or 'I
was dying of typhoid and our skipper thought I needed salts, but they
cured me on the _Robert Cassall_.
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