The next morning Sydney Belton rose in excellent time, but not from a
desire to keep good hours. He could not sleep well, so he dressed and
went out, to find it was only on the stroke of six.
As he reached the garden, there was his self-constituted enemy
stretching out before him, far as eye could reach, and sparkling
gloriously in the morning sunshine.
"Bother the sea!" muttered the boy, scowling. "Wish it was all dry
land."
"What cheer, lad! Mornin', mornin'. Don't she look lovely, eh?"
"Morning, Barney," said the boy, turning to see that the old boatswain
had come to work with a scythe over his shoulder. "What looks lovely
this morning?"
"Eh? Why, the sea, of course. Wish I was afloat, 'stead of having to
shave this lawn, like a wholesale barber. Got any noos?"
"Yes, Barney," said the boy, bitterly; "I'm to go to sea."
"Hurray!" cried the old boatswain, rubbing his scythe-blade with the
stone rubber, and bringing forth a musical sound.
"You're glad of it, then?"
"Course I am, my lad. Be the making on you. Wish I was coming too."
"Bah!" ejaculated Sydney, and he left the old boatswain to commence the
toilet of the dewy lawn, while in a desultory way, for the sake of doing
something to fill up the time till breakfast, he strolled round to the
back, where a loud whistling attracted his attention.
The sound came from an outhouse, toward which the boy directed his
steps.
"Cleaning the knives, I suppose," said Sydney to himself, and going to
the door he looked in.
The tray of knives was there waiting to be cleaned, and the board and
bath-brick were on a bench, but the red-faced boy was otherwise engaged.
He was kneeling down with a rough, curly-haired retriever dog sitting up
before him, with paws drooped and nose rigid, while Pan was carefully
balancing a knife across the pointed nose aforesaid.
Pan was so busily employed that he did not hear the step, and the first
notification he had of another's presence was given by the dog, who
raised his muzzle suddenly and uttered a loud and piteous whine directed
at Sydney--the dog's cry seeming to say, "Do make him leave off."
The glance the boatswain's son gave made him spring at the board, snatch
up a couple of the implements, and begin to rub them to and fro
furiously, while the dog, in high glee at being freed from an arduous
task, began to leap about, barking loudly, and making dashes at his
young master's legs.
"Poor old Don--there!" cried Sydney, patting the dog's ears. "He don't
like discipline, then. Well, Pan, when are you going to sea?"
"Not never," said the boy, shortly.
"Yes, you are. Your father said he should send you."
"If he does I shall run away, so there," cried the boy.
Sydney turned away, and walked through the garden, his head bent, his
brow wrinkled, and his mind so busily occupied, that he hardly heeded
which way he went.
"If his father sends him he shall run away."
Those words kept on repeating themselves in Sydney's brain like some
jingle, and he found himself thinking of them more and more as he passed
through the gate, and went along the road that late autumn morning,
kicking up the dead leaves which lay clustering beneath the trees.
"If his father sends him to sea he shall run away," said Sydney to
himself; and then he thought of how Pan Strake would be free, and have
no more boots and shoes or knives to clean, and not have to go into the
garden to weed the paths.
Then by a natural course he found himself thinking that if he, Sydney
Belton, were to leave home, he would escape being sent to sea--at all
events back to school--and he too would be free.
With a boy's wilful obstinacy, he carefully drew a veil over all the
good, and dragged out into the mental light all that he looked upon as
bad in his every-day life, satisfied himself that he was ill-used, and
wished that he had had a mother living to, as he called it, take his
part.
"I wonder what running away would be like?" he thought. "There would be
no Uncle Tom to come and bully and bother me, and father wouldn't be
there to take his side against me. I wonder what one could do if one
ran away?"
"Morning!"
Sydney started, for he had been so intent upon his thoughts that he had
not heard the regular trot, trot of a plump cob, nor the grinding of
wheels, and he looked up to see that it was Doctor Liss who had suddenly
drawn rein in the road.
"Going for a walk, Syd?"
"Yes; but--I--Where are you going, doctor?"
"Into the town. Just been called up. Poor fellow injured in the docks
last night."
"Take me with you."
"What?" cried the doctor, smiling down in the eager face before him.
"Didn't I get scolded enough last night, you young dog, for leading you
astray?"
"Oh, but father didn't mean it. Do take me. Is he much hurt?"
"Broken leg, I hear. No, no. Go home to breakfast. Ck! Sally. Good
morning."
The doctor touched the cob as he nodded to Sydney, and the wheels of the
chaise began to turn, but with a bound the boy was out in the road, and
hanging on to the back.
"No, no, Doctor Liss, don't leave me behind. I do so want to go, and
there's plenty of time for me to get back to breakfast."
"But Sir Thomas will declare I am leading you into the evil paths of
medicine and surgery."
"Uncle won't know. Do pull up; let me come."
"Well," said the doctor, smiling grimly, "I don't see that it can do you
any harm, Syd. Here, jump in."
There was no need for a second consent. Almost before the horse could
be stopped the boy had leaped lightly in, and with his face bright and
eager once more, and the dark misty notions upon which he had been
brooding gone clean away, he began chatting merrily to his old friend,
whose rounds he had often gone.
"Yes, yes, Syd, that's all very well," said the doctor, making his
whip-lash whistle through the air, "but you don't know what a doctor's
life is. All very well driving here on a bright autumn morning to get
an appetite for breakfast, but look at the long dark dismal rides I have
at all times in the winter."
"Well, they can't be half so bad as keeping a watch in a storm right out
at sea. Why, I've heard both father and Uncle Tom say that it's awful
sometimes."
"Only sometimes, Syd."
"Well, I can't help it. I hate it, and I won't go."
"Must, my boy, must. Take it like a dose of my very particular. You
know, Syd," said the doctor, nudging the boy with his elbow; "that rich
thick morning draught I gave you after a fever."
"Oh, I say, don't," cried Sydney, with a wry face and a shudder; "it's
horrid. I declare, when I'm a doctor, I'll never give any one such
stuff."
"No, Syd, you'll be a captain, and the physic for your patients will be
cat-o'-nine-tails."
Sydney frowned, and as they neared the busy town, with its little forest
of masts rising beyond the houses, Doctor Liss glanced sideways at the
boy's gloomy and thoughtful countenance.
"Why, Syd," he said at last merrily, "you look as gloomy as if you had
been pressed. Come, my lad, take your medicine, and then you can have
that sweet afterwards that we call duty."
Sydney made no reply, but his face did not brighten, for duty seemed to
him then a nauseous bitter.
"Doctor Liss," he said, just as they reached the docks, down one of
whose side lanes the patient lay, "if I make up my mind to be a
doctor--"
"You can't, Syd. You are too young to have one yet. A man's mind is as
strong as if it had bone and muscle. Yours is only like jelly."