UNCLE BEN
During the next three days the girls were restless with excitement.
Uncle Ben would, they were sure, send them a telegram as soon as he
reached Plymouth, and one or another of them was constantly on the
look-out for the messenger from the little village postoffice. They
turned out the spare bedroom, and had a grand clean-up; hung fresh
curtains, aired mattress and bedclothes, and made things shipshape, as
he would say, in anticipation of Uncle Ben's arrival. On the third day
the girl at the post-office rode up on her bicycle with the little
brown envelope. Tommy flew to meet her, and in another moment was
running back to the house crying, "Coming to-morrow! To-morrow!" at
the top of her voice.
Of course they drove down to the station next day fully an hour before
the train was due. Tommy beguiled the time by weighing her sisters and
herself on the station weighing-machine, looked in at the
booking-office, ran to the signal-box and asked to be allowed to work
the levers, and in other ways acted up to her reputation.
At last the train was signalled. The three girls looked eagerly down
the line. Presently the engine rounded the curve nearly half-a-mile
away, and as the train rumbled along the straight line towards the
station, a red bandana handkerchief was seen vigorously waving at the
window of a compartment in the centre.
"There he is!" cried Tommy, dancing with excitement, and waving her
handkerchief in return.
"Stand back, miss," called the station-master, as she stepped near the
edge of the platform.
"Oh, I shan't hurt your old engine," replied Tommy, who, nevertheless,
allowed her sisters to take a hand each until the train came to a
standstill. Then she darted towards the compartment from which issued
a short, stoutish man, with a jolly, red face, short, close-trimmed
beard, and eyes ready to light up with fun at the slightest provocation.
Captain Benjamin Barton was a sailor of the good old-fashioned sort.
He had been to sea ever since he was thirteen, when he had run away to
Plymouth after an exchange of discourtesies with the classical master
at the Grammar School: he never could abide Latin. During nearly fifty
years of life at sea he had saved a considerable sum, and had become
part owner of his vessel, besides having shares in several others. He
still loyally stuck to the sailing ship; the steamship had no
attractions for him; and he was never tired of comparing the two, to
the great disadvantage of the more modern type. Tommy once said that
he reminded her of the 'bus-driver behind whom she had sat when on her
only visit to London, who had spoken with the bitterest scorn of the
motor omnibus. The captain's twinkling black eyes gleamed with fun
when Tommy assured him artlessly that the 'busman was "just such a dear
old stick-in-the-mud" as he was. Tommy sprang into his arms as he got
out of the railway carriage. He gradually extricated himself from her
embrace, and turning to his elder nieces, silently kissed them. In
spite of a brave attempt at cheerfulness his eyes were rather dim as he
mumbled a word of greeting. He had always been on the best of terms
with their father, and, when he was ashore, had been accustomed to make
the farm his headquarters. The loss of his brother-in-law had come as
a great shock to him; and the remembrance of it, together with the
meeting with the three fatherless girls, almost unmanned him for the
moment. The red bandana handkerchief came into play again; he blew his
nose furiously, declared that railway travelling always gave him a
cold, and turning on Dan Whiddon, the small porter, who was staggering
under a trunk he had taken from the compartment, he cried--
"Now, young Samson, don't be too rough with that little contraption of
mine."
The aggrieved look on Dan's face set them laughing, and the tension was
relieved. They passed out of the station, and came to the little farm
wagonette. Tommy was usually driver, but as there was only room for
one on the driver's seat, and she declared that she was going to sit
with Uncle, Elizabeth good-naturedly offered to take the reins. When
the Captain, the other girls, and the trunk were packed in behind, it
was a tight squeeze, and Dan Whiddon, rejoicing in twopence, surveyed
the pony doubtfully.
"You'm better get out and walk up t' hill," he suggested, with the
familiarity of an old friend.
"Be off and buy your sweeties, Samson," said the Captain, "or we'll
hitch you on as leader." And laughing at his own jest, Uncle Ben
squeezed Mary with his right arm, and Tommy with his left, and called
to Elizabeth to get under way.
There was little talking on the homeward drive. The younger girls were
quite happy nestling against their uncle; and he was thinking of his
many former home-comings. But when he entered the bright farm parlour,
and saw the spread tea-table, and the blazing fire which Mrs. Pratt had
kindled--then his jolly weather-worn face glowed, and he cried, in the
same words he had used a score of times before--
"East or west, home is best. How do, Jane?"
"Nicely, thank'ee sir," returned Mrs. Pratt, with a bob, "except for my
poor feet."
The girls smiled. They had heard the same question and answer ever
since they could remember, when Uncle Ben came home. Tommy meanwhile
had removed his hat, Mary had slyly stuffed his red handkerchief into
his pocket, and now Elizabeth gently pushed him down into his favourite
arm-chair. Mrs. Pratt, who suffered from bunions, and hobbled about,
made the tea, while Mary toasted what was in that country place still
called a Sally Lunn, and Elizabeth fetched from the dairy, now very
bare and forlorn, a pot of cool delicious Devonshire cream. During
these preparations Tommy was content to sit at her uncle's feet,
resting her head on his knees, and now and again giving his horny hand
a squeeze.
It was Tommy, however, who kept things lively at the tea-table.
"Now, Uncle," she would say, "you must have more cream in your tea, or
you'll be as nervous as a cat."
"Very well, my dear," was the meek reply. "Afloat I drink it without
milk or cream, sea-cows not being tractable animals, you know; but when
in Rome, do as the rum 'uns do, eh?"
"That dreadful old pun of yours! You expect us to punish you, don't
you now?"
"I'll be Punch to your Judy," returned the Captain, with a hearty
laugh, and for some minutes he alternately cracked his simple jokes and
devoted himself to his food. "I always say there's nothing in foreign
parts to match the cakes and cream of Devonshire," he said, "and you'd
know it if you lived on ship's biscuit and salt horse, my girl."
"Where have you been this voyage, Uncle?" asked Mary.
"Peru and Monte Video, and other outlandish parts, my dear. I was held
up in the Doldrums, and water was running plaguy short; 'water, water
everywhere, but not a drop to drink,' as that poetry fellow says. One
more voyage, my girls, and then I drop anchor for good."
"We hoped you would stay with us," said Elizabeth.
"Couldn't do it, Bess," he replied. "I can hold a straight course, but
I couldn't run a straight furrow for the life of me. No; one more
voyage, to the South Pacific Islands this time, and then I'll take a
snug little cottage somewhere by the sea, and spend my days
whitewashing it, and getting worse-tempered every day, and you shall
keep house for me, and smooth me down."
And then Tommy put the usual question--it always came from Tommy.
"What adventures did you have this time, Uncle?"
Uncle Ben rubbed his chin, and assumed an air of deep reflection.
"Adventures! Well, the only one worth speaking about," he said slowly,
"was when we were becalmed in latitude 35° South, longitude 152° East,
I think it was. By the chart we should have been about a hundred and
fifty miles from the nearest land, but one morning Long Jimmy--the tall
fellow with one eye, you remember----?"
"Yes," said Tommy; "he helped me down the side last time I saw you off."
"Well, he was look-out at the time, and he sings out, 'Land-ho!' I was
on deck in a twinkling, I can tell you; and there, a couple of points
on the starboard quarter, was a smallish kind of island, and stretching
away behind it a lot of little islands pretty near as far as you could
see. The biggest was as large as Mount St. Michael, maybe, and all of
a white shiny rock. I made a few remarks about the chart-makers, and
was thinking of putting out a boat to examine it, when, bless your
eyes! that island began to move, and all the little 'uns after it."
Here he drank half a cup of tea, and the girls waited breathlessly for
him to continue.
"Some one set up a cry of sea-serpent," he went on gravely, "and Sunny
Pat--the little Irishman, you remember---?"
"Yes, such a funny little man. Go on, Uncle," said Tommy.
"Well, Sunny Pat calls out, 'Begorra, shure 'tis the way of openin' it
is!' and sure enough that big island showed a gash right across the
middle, that grew wider and wider, and each side of it there was a row
of teeth about as long as a church steeple. Jupiter, 'twas a fearsome
sight. But Sandy Sam--you remember him, the big red-headed
fellow--he's got more presence of mind than any able seaman I ever met.
He outs with a big gooseberry--we'd taken a few bushels on board at
Greenland--and flings it straight at the monster, knowing that
sea-serpents can't abide big gooseberries, being in the same line of
business, as you may say. Well----"
Here the story was interrupted, for the girls made a simultaneous rush
on the old man. Tommy pummelled him. Mary put her hand over his
mouth, and Elizabeth took his half-eaten cake, and declared that he
should have no more until he confessed that he had been fibbing.
"You naughty wicked old man," cried Tommy, as he shook with laughter.
"Now you shan't have another cup of tea until you've turned out your
pockets."
"I give in," said the Captain. "Three to one isn't fair play. I've
had enough tea, only let me get my pipe alight and then we'll see."
As long as the girls could remember, their uncle, on his arrival, when
his first pipe was lit, had turned out his capacious pockets, in which
there was always a present of some kind for every one, besides oddments
unaddressed which his nieces appropriated at their fancy. Settled in
the arm-chair, with a big calabash pipe in his mouth, he plunged his
hand into a pocket, and brought out the red bandana handkerchief.
"That's your flag," cried Tommy. "Be quick!"
"Patience," he replied, producing a tin of tobacco and a knife.
"We'll let you keep them," said Mary. "What next, Uncle?"
"Well, here's a small parcel with somebody's name on it, and it looks
uncommon like Mary."
Mary seized the parcel, opened it, and uttered a cry of delight as she
unfolded a pretty Indian scarf.
"Oh, you dear!" she cried, giving him a kiss.
He plunged his hand again into his pocket and drew out slowly and with
a solemn air that made the girls agog with expectation--a short cutty
pipe, at which they cried "Shame!" Then came another small parcel,
marked with Elizabeth's name, which proved to contain a tortoiseshell
comb with silver mountings. Another dip brought forth a bright round
silver case with a long cord hanging from a hole in the side. Tommy
pounced on this.
"What is it, Uncle?" she asked.
"It's a contraption for getting a light in a wind, given me by an old
friend in Valparaiso," replied the Captain. "'Twas kindly meant, to be
sure, but I've never used it, for I've never had any difficulty in
lighting my pipe in any wind that ever blew short of a typhoon, and
then a man has other things to think about. I'll show you how it's
done, and you can keep it against the time when you're an old woman and
go round selling things from a caravan: old women of that sort always
smoke."
"The idea!" exclaimed Tommy, but when her uncle had shown her how to
obtain a spark by turning a little handle sharply, and how the spark
ignited the cord, she took the thing and slipped it into her pocket.
Then at last came the parcel for which Tommy had been eagerly waiting,
and she gave a long sigh of pleasure as she drew through her fingers a
scarf of exquisite fineness like Mary's.
"You're a darling!" she cried, giving her uncle a tight hug, and at the
same time knocking his pipe from his mouth. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she
said contritely. "Never mind, I'll fill it again for you."
Captain Barton took from his pockets sundry other articles which he
divided among the girls, as well as a queer assortment of his personal
belongings. When all his pockets were empty, Tommy said--
"Now you can put all that rubbish back; see what a litter it makes!"
"For what you don't want, I return humble and hearty thanks," said the
Captain, using a form of words which they had heard from his lips ever
since they were babies. "And now if you can think of anything but
fal-lals, we'll settle down and have a cosy talk about things. Draw
your chairs up to the fire, girls."