Nandy kept his word.
Breakfast next morning was no sooner over than he made a bolt across the
pleasure-grounds, crept through the hedge at the bottom, and went singing
down the woods towards Merry-Garden, with his heart half-lovesick and
half-gleeful, and with two thick sandwiches of bread-and-butter in his
pocket to provide against accidents. But he didn't feel altogether easy
at the thought of facing Aunt Barbree: and by and by, drawing near to the
house and catching sight of his aunt's sun-bonnet up among the
raspberry-canes, he decided (as they say) to play for safety.
So, creeping down to the front door, he slipped under it a letter which he
had spent a solid hour last night in composing; and made his way to the
foreshore, to loaf and smoke a pipe of stolen tobacco and, generally
speaking, make the most of his holiday. The note said--
"Dear Aunt,--Do not weep for me. The sulphur-water made me sick and I
could stand it no longer. So am gone for a Soger. Letters and
remittances will doubtless find me if addressed to the Citadel,
Plymouth. A loving heart is what I hunger for--Your affect, nephew,
Ferdinando Jewell."
"P.S.--On 2nd thoughts I may be able to come back this evening to say
farewell for ever."
"P.S.--Don't sit up."
Now a boy may be a lazy good-for-nothing, and yet (if you'll understand
me) be missed from a garden where there are ladders to fix and mazzard
cherries to pick; and likewise, though liable to be grumbled at, a boy has
his uses in the gathering of cockles. Though she knew him to be an
anointed young humbug, there's no denying that Aunt Barbree had missed
Nandy and his help. She was getting past fifty, and somehow the last ten
days had reminded her of it. . . . The long and short of it was that,
after a couple of hours fruit-picking--and it took her no less to get
together the supply she'd reckoned on for her afternoon customers--she
entered the house with a feeling of stiffness in her back and a feeling
that answered to it elsewhere, that maybe Nandy was a better boy than
she'd given him credit for. Upon top of this feeling she pushed open the
door and spied his letter lying on the mat.
The reading of it turned her hot and cold. She marched straight to the
dairy, where Susannah was busy with the cream-pans, and says she,
loosening her bonnet-strings as she dropped upon a bench, "He was but an
orphan, after all, Susannah: and now we've driven 'en to desperation!"
"Who's been driven to desperation?" asked Susannah.
"Why, Nandy," answered Aunt Barbree, tears brimming her eyes. "Who elst?"
"Piggywig's tail!" said Susannah. "What new yarn has the cheeld been
tellin'?"
"He's my own nephew, and a Furnace upon his mother's side," said Aunt
Barbree; "and I'll trouble you to speak more respectful of your employer's
kin. And he hasn't been tellin' it; he've _written_ it, here in pen and
ink. He've cut and run to take the King's shilling and be a sojer: and if
I can't overtake him before he gets to Plymouth Citadel the deed will he
done, and the Frenchies will knock him upon the head and I shall be
without a roof to cover me. Get me my shawl and bonnet."
"You baint goin' to tell me," said Susannah, "that you act'lly mean to
take and trapse to Plymouth in all this heat?"
"I do," said Barbree. "Get me my shawl and bonnet."
"What, on a Saturday afternoon! And me left single-handed to tend the
customers!"
"Drat the customers!" said Aunt Barbree. "And drat everything, includin'
the boy, if you like! But fetch to Plymouth I must and will. So, for the
third time of askin', get me my shawl and bonnet."
It cost a mort of coaxing even to persuade her to a bite of dinner before
setting forth. By half-past noon she was dressed and ready, and took the
road toward Saltash Ferry. Nandy didn't see her start. He was lying
stretched, just then, under the cliff by the foreshore, getting rid of the
effects of his pipe of tobacco.
It left him so exhausted that, when the worst was over, he rolled on his
stomach on the warm stones of the foreshore and fell into a doze; by
consequence of which he knew nothing more till the tide crept up and
wetted his ankles; and with that he heard voices--uproarious voices on the
water--and sat up to see a boatload of people pass by him and draw to the
landing-stage under Merry-Garden.
Nandy rubbed his eyes, studied the visitors--that is, as well as he could
at fifty yards' distance--and chuckled. He knew that his aunt was a
respectable woman, and particular about the folks she admitted to her
gardens. But it was too late to interfere--even if he'd wanted to
interfere, which he didn't. So he watched the visitors draw to land and
disembark; and sat and waited, still chuckling.