The two lads went off towards the village, Dick in the highest of glee,
and chattering and questioning about everything he saw, Will getting
more and more quiet and lower of spirit as he thought of the ordeal that
he had to face.
For he had asked this young stranger, whom he had never seen before, to
come home and share his meal, and all in the frankness of his young
hospitable feelings. In fact, he would have given him his own meal with
the greatest of pleasure; but it had all been done without a thought of
Aunt Ruth and Uncle Abram.
"Where do you live?" said Dick suddenly.
"Up at the end there; the white cottage."
"What! with the pretty garden and the flowers?" cried the boy. "I know
Nor'-nor'-west Cottage. Father said he wished we could have it when we
looked round."
"Yes, that's my home," said Will. "Uncle is very fond of his garden,
and takes great pains with it."
"Uncle?" said Dick. "Do you live with your uncle?"
"And aunt," replied Will quietly; and there was so much meaning in his
tone that his companion did not ask the question upon his lips about
father and mother.
"I like gardens," said Dick; "but we can't grow anything in our back
garden in town. I did try some vegetable-marrows, but the cats
scratched up some, and the smoke and blacks killed the others. Anything
will grow down here, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, if you don't plant it just where the west wind cuts. It is so
fierce sometimes. Let's go round by the back, and I can take you
through our garden."
"All right!" cried Dick eagerly, and he did not notice the deepening of
the colour in his new friend's face, for Will felt guilty of a
subterfuge. He was really alarmed as to the result of his invitation,
and its effect upon his aunt, so he hoped by going round by the back to
find his old uncle in the garden, according to his custom, planting,
weeding, and fumigating his plants, whether they needed it or no.
Fortune favoured Will, for after a climb round by the narrow alley he
let his companion in by the little top gate into the rough terrace
garden on the steep slope of the cliff--a quaint little place full of
rocks and patches of rich earth, and narrowed stony paths, but one blaze
of bright colour, and full of promise of fruit.
"Why, how comical!" said Dick. "We're higher than the roof of your
house!"
"Yes; it's all so steep here," replied Will. "Oh! here's uncle."
He turned down a narrow path, where, pipe in mouth, and emitting puffs
of smoke, the old gentleman was busy with some strips of matting tying
up the heavy blossoms of carnations to some neatly cut sticks. So
intent was he upon his occupation that the two lads stood gazing at him
for a few minutes before he rose up, emitting a long puff of smoke, and
turned round to nod shortly at Will, and stare severely at the new-comer
in a stolid manner peculiarly his own.
"What cheer?" he said slowly.
"Uncle, this is a young gentleman just come down from town."
"To Peter Churchtown, eh?" said the old gentleman, pulling down his buff
waistcoat with the brass crown-and-anchor buttons, and passing one hand
over his chin to make sure whether his grey beard did not look stubbly.
"Yes, sir; my father has come down on mining business," said the lad
eagerly, "and we're going to stay."
"Glad to see you, sir, glad to see you," said the old gentleman, holding
out an enormous gnarled hand, whose back was covered with great veins,
and faintly showed through its ruddy-brown a blue tattooed figure of a
mermaid.
"He's going fishing with Josh and me this evening; we're going to lay
the bolter from the boat."
"Quite right!" said the old gentleman, nodding. "Nice evening for
fishing. You'll get some flat-fish, I daresay."
"And," said Will, making an effort, and speaking hoarsely in his
eagerness to make a clean breast, "I asked him if he'd come home and
have tea with me before we go."
The old gentleman winced for a moment, as he might have winced in the
old days when, as purser, he inspected his stores on a long voyage, and
feared that they were running short. It was but for a moment, and then
he recovered himself.
"Asked him to tea? that's well, that's right, my lad. I'm glad to see
you, sir. Do you like flowers?"
"I love them," cried the boy, who was gazing half wonderingly at the old
man's florid face, and its frame of stiff grey hairs.
"Then you shall have one of my best clove-pinks," he went on, taking his
great pruning-knife from his pocket. "Let me see," he continued,
opening the blade slowly, "which is the best? Ah! that's a good one--
that's a beauty--there!"
He stooped down, and after a good deal of selection cut a splendid
aromatic clove-pink, and handed it smiling to the boy, who smelt it and
placed it in the button-hole of his loose flannel jacket.
"It's a beauty," he cried.
"Yes, isn't it?" said the old man proudly. "Don't get such flowers as
that in London, eh?"
"Only in Covent Garden," replied the visitor.
"What garden?--oh! ah! yes, I recollect, Covent Garden Market. Marrows
growing well, sir, arn't they?" he continued, pointing to the great
succulent plants trailing over the rocks. "My bees;" he pointed to five
straw hives. "You shall taste our honey. Wild thyme honey off the
cliff and moor. Very glad you've come, sir. But, I say," he added,
stopping short in the middle of the path, taking his pipe from his lips,
and sending a puff down first one nostril and then the other, "never
mind him, I'm master. You shall be my visitor to-day, eh?"
He chuckled and clapped Dick on the shoulder, pushing him half before
him down the stony, steppy path, and as he did so he turned his great
grey head and gave a most prodigious wink, accompanied by a screw up of
the face at Will, a look full of secrecy and scheming, all of which,
however, Will fully understood and felt relieved.
"It's very kind of you to a stranger," said the visitor.
"Not at all, my lad, not at all. You've come to live among us, and
we're very glad to see you. Here we are, here's my good lady--Mrs
Marion. I've got a visitor, my dear: Mr--Mr--what's your name?" he
whispered hastily.
"Richard Temple," said the lad, in the same tone.
"Ah, to be sure! my memory's getting bad. Mr Richard Temple, my dear.
Young gentleman from London. Come to have a cup of tea with us
to-night."
Aunt Ruth's first feeling was that it was a liberty to ask anyone to tea
without first obtaining her consent; her second, one of annoyance that
she had not put on her black silk that afternoon; her next, one of
pleasure, for the lad went up to her in a pleasant, frank, gentlemanly
way, and held out his hand, behaving towards the old lady with that
natural chivalry and courtesy that you always see in a boy who has been
much with a good mother and grown-up sisters.
"It's very kind of you to welcome me like this," he said; and, to Will's
great relief, Aunt Ruth smiled and felt ready to purr, and as if she
really had been welcoming the visitor very warmly. "Don't think me
rude," continued the lad, whose eager eyes kept wandering about, "but
I've just come from London, where everything seems so dark and grim; and
your cottage does look so beautiful, and clean, and snug."
"Well said, youngster!" cried Uncle Abram; "so it does. Our skipper
won't have a spot on anything or a bit of dust anywhere; eh, Will?"
"Oh no! aunt likes the place to look nice," echoed Will.
"Don't you listen to them, my dear," said Aunt Ruth; "but I'm very glad
to see you, and you must excuse me now."
She slipped out of the room, and Uncle Abram gave his nephew another
look full of intelligence before proceeding to show his young guest his
collection in the best room while the tea was being prepared.
For the best room was quite a museum of trophies brought by Uncle
Abram's own hands from what he called "furren lands;" and Dick was
excitement itself over the inspection.
"This here's the grains," said the old gentleman, pointing to a
five-pronged spear, on a long slight pole, with a cord attached to the
shaft. "We uses this to take bonito and dolphin out in the hot seas.
Strikes 'em as they play under the bobstay, you know."
"And what's this?" said Dick eagerly.
"Backbone of a shark, twelve foot long, as we hooked and drew aboard o'
the _Princess_ off Barbadoes, Jennywury sixteen, eighteen hundred
forty-nine."
"You caught it with a hook?" cried Dick.
"Baited with a bit o' very bad salt pork," said the old man. Then,
pointing with the stem of his pipe: "His jaws."
Then from the lancet-toothed jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of
spirits--an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In
a glass case was the complete shell of a lobster, out of which the
crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and
arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand
paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of
sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been
fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn
barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-shells, the glass
having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the
side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the
chimney-glass the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball--a thirty-two
pounder--rested in a wooden cup, a ball that had no history; and close
by it, in a glass case, was a very ill-shaped cannon-ball, about
one-fourth its size, which had a history, having been picked out of the
wall of Saint Anthony's Church on the cliff, into which it had been
fired by the Spaniards in the days of "good Queen Bess."
There were curiosities enough to have taken the young visitor hours more
to see, only while they were in the midst of them Aunt Ruth came in
smiling, and in a state of compromise--that is to say, there had been no
time to change her dress, but she had mounted her best cap and put on
her black watered-silk apron, two pieces of confectionery that it would
take half a chapter to properly describe, so they may go with the simple
announcement that they were wonders.
"Tea is ready," said the old lady; and she smiled more graciously still
when Dick stepped forward and offered his arm to walk the four steps
across to the second best room, where meals were always spread.
Everything was very homely and simple, but to the boy fresh from London
the table was a delight. Right in the centre there was a blue jug full
of the old purser's choicest flowers scenting the room. The best
tea-tray covered one end, with its paraphernalia of best china, the
battered old silver pot and very much worn silver tea-spoons; while at
the other end was a ham in cut, a piece of ornamental preservation, all
pinky fat and crimson lean, marbled throughout. A noble-looking
home-baked loaf, a pat of yellow butter--real cow's butter--ornamented
with a bas-relief of the swing-tailed horned lady who presumably was its
author, and on either side a dish of raspberry jam, and another
containing a piece of virgin honey-comb, from which trickled forth the
pale golden sweetness.
"Allus make it a rule here, sir," said the old purser, "o' having a good
bit o' salt provision in cut. Let me give you a bit o' 'am."
Dick raised no objection, and then, as soon as he was helped, and saw
the cup of tea with a veined pattern of rich lumpy cream running over
it, he sighed involuntarily.
"There, I am sorry," cried Aunt Ruth, "it isn't to your liking. I knew
that ham would be too salt."
Dick Temple flushed like a girl.
"Oh no!" he cried; "it wasn't that."
"Then it's the butter!" cried the old lady, in mortified tones.
"Butter!" cried Dick, who had already eaten two semicircles out of a
slice; "why, it's glorious! We never get such butter in London."
"But you sighed," said the old lady, bridling, while Uncle Abram
wrinkled his forehead and shook his head at Will.
"Did I?" said Dick, colouring a little more deeply. "Well, it was
because I wished Taff was here."
"What, is that your dog?" said the old lady, smiling again.
"No!" cried Dick, laughing; "it's my brother Arthur. I always call him
Taff, because--because--I don't know why, but I generally call him
Taff."
"I'm sure we should be very pleased to see the young gentleman," said
Aunt Ruth in the most stately manner; and then poor Taff was forgotten,
from the fact that, after well assisting the guest, Uncle Abram and Will
set such an example in the way of eating that it proved contagious, and
Dick was soon proving himself no mean trencherman, while he fully
realised the wisdom of the old sailor in always having "a good bit o'
salt provision in cut."
When they rose from the table Aunt Ruth was quite sure that her visitor
had not had half a tea, which words were comforting to Dick, whose
conscience, now that he had eaten, was beginning to smite him for
behaving so voraciously at these strangers' table--unnecessary qualms,
for his performance had been very mild compared to that of the purser,
who shook hands warmly when his guest took leave, Mrs Marion
supplementing her good-bye with a warm invitation to come again.