Tom walked up and down through the passages a little
uneasily, for he was sure the ex-clerk had come into the
hotel. He went up and looked in at the ladies'
sitting-rooms, to see if perhaps some Duchess of
Devonshire, of high political circles, had found it worth
while to drag Mr. Greenhithe up there by a single hair.
No Mr. Greenhithe! Tom was forced to go down and drink
a glass of beer to see if Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty.
But at that moment, though Mr. Greenhithe was generally
thirsty in the middle of the day, and although many men
were thirsty at the time Tom hung over his glass of
lager, Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty there. It was only
as Tom passed the billiard-room that he saw Mr.
Greenhithe was playing a game of billiards, by way of
celebrating the new birth of a regenerated world.
What to do now! Tom could not, in common decency, go
in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke.
Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the
Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about. Tom
slowly withdrew.
As he withdrew, whom should be meet but one of his
kindest friends, Commodore Benbow? When the boys made
their "experimental cruise" the year before, they had
found Commodore Benbow's ship at Lisbon. The Commodore
had taken a particular fancy to Tom, because he had known
his mother when they were boy and girl.
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