.

Why, with a connection like that it was good investment to buy that ship.
Good! Aye, at the time." The turning of his head slightly toward me at this point was like a sign of strong feeling in any other man.
"You'll mind that this was long before Cloete came into it at all," he muttered, warningly.
"Yes.

I will mind," I said.

"We generally say: some years passed.
That's soon done." He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing way, as if engrossed in the thought of the years so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they were, the years before and the years (not so many) after Cloete came upon the scene.

When he began to speak again, I discerned his intention to point out to me, in his obscure and graphic manner, the influence on George Dunbar of long association with Cloete's easy moral standards, unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour (funny fellow), and adventurously reckless disposition.