Perhaps it was with reading _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Sindbad the Sailor_--
I don't know, but I always did have a hankering after going abroad.
Twopence was generally the extent of my supply of hard cash, so I used
to get dreaming about gold, and to think that I had only to be wrecked
upon some rocky shore to find the remains of a Spanish galleon freighted
with gold in doubloons, and bars, and ingots, a prize to which I could
lay claim, and be rich for ever after.
Now, with such ideas as these in my head, I ask anybody, was it likely
that I could take to soap-boiling?
That was my father's business, and he was very proud of his best and
second quality yellow, and his prime hard mottled. He had made a
comfortable living out of it, as his father and grandfather had before
him, helping to cleanse no end of people in their time; but I thought
then, as I think now, that it was a nasty unpleasant business, whose
odour is in my nostrils to the present day.
"You're no good, Harry," said my father, "not a bit, and unless you sink
that tin-pot pride of yours, and leave off wandering about and wearing
out your boots, and take off your coat and go to work, you'll never get
a living. You've always got your nose stuck in a book--such trash! Do
you ever see me over a book unless it's a daybook or ledger, eh?"
My father had no sooner done speaking than my mother shook her head at
me, and I went and stood out in the yard, leaning my back up against one
of the great tallow hogsheads, and thought.
It only took me five minutes to make up my mind, for the simple reason
that it was already seven-eighths on the way, this not being the first
time by many a score that my father had given me his opinion respecting
my future prospects in life; and as I neared twenty such opinions used
to seem to grit in amongst my mental works, while the longer I lived the
more I thought that I should never get my livelihood by soap-boiling.
Well, my mind was made up most stubbornly that I would go out to Uncle
Reuben.
Just then, as I stood moodily there, I heard the sound of a scuffle and
a sharp smack, and directly after, one of our lads, a young fellow of my
own age Tom Bulk by name, came hurriedly out of the kitchen door,
rubbing the side of his red face, but only to drop his hand the moment
he caught sight of me leaning against the tallow-tub.
"What's the matter, Tom?" I said, though I knew well enough that Tom
was in hot water.
"Got a flea in my ear, Mas'r Harry," he said, with a grin of vexation.
"I caught it in the kitchen."
"So have I, Tom," I said bitterly; "but I caught mine in the parlour."
"Mas'r been rowing you agen, sir?"
"Yes, Tom," I said drearily, "and it's for the last time. If I'm no
good I may as well be off. I can't take to our business."
"Well, tain't so sweet as it used to be, sir; and it don't seem right
that, to make other folks clean, we should allers be in a greasy mess.
But what are you going to do, Mas'r Harry?" he said anxiously.
"Going abroad, Tom."
"So am I, Mas'r Harry."
"You, Tom?"
"Sure I am, Mas'r Harry, if you are," said Tom; and then and there he
pulled off his great, greasy leather apron and soapy white slop, and
fetched his shiny jacket out of the boiling-house. "I'm ready, Mas'r
Harry," he exclaimed, as he fought hard to get one arm properly into his
sleeve, but had to try again and again, because the button was off the
wristband of his shirt, and the sleeve kept slipping up to his shoulder,
necessitating a fresh attempt.
I burst out laughing at him, as I saw the earnest way in which he took
my announcement; but the more I laughed the more solid Tom became, as he
worked his body into his old coat, and then proceeded to button it right
up to the chin, slapping himself several times upon the chest to settle
a wrinkle here and there, and ending by spitting in his hands, and
looking at me as much as to say, "Where's boxes, Mas'r Harry? Let's be
off."
"Watcher larfin' at, Mas'r Harry?" he said at last.
"At you, Tom," I replied.
"All right, Mas'r Harry," he replied in the most philosophical way,
"larfin' don't cost nothing, and it's very pleasant, and it don't matter
when it's them as you know; but when it comes to somebody you don't
know, why then it riles."