The Red Eric Part 38

"Oh! never mind just now, dear Jane, we can look it up afterwards--`stivers--sticks and stivers'--something very dreadful, I fear. `But we're all safe and well now'--I'm _so_ thankful!--`and we've been stumped'--No `starved nearly to death, too. My poor Ailie was thinner than ever I saw her before'--This is horrible, dear Jane."

"Dreadful, darling Martha."

"`But she's milk and b.u.t.ter'--It can't be that--`milk and'--oh!--`much better now.'"

At this point Martha laid down the letter, and the two sisters wept for a few seconds in silence.

"Darling Ailie!" said Martha, drying her eyes, "how thin she must have been!"

"Ah! yes, and no one to take in her frocks."

"`We'll be home in less than no time,'" continued Martha, reading, "`so you may get ready for us. Glynn will have tremendous long yarns to spin to you when we come back, and so will Ailie. She has seen a Lotofun since we left you'--Bless me! what _can_ that be, Jane?"

"Very likely some terrible sea monster, Martha; how thankful we ought to be that it did not eat her!--`seen a Lotofun'--strange!--`a Lot--o"-- Oh!--`_lot o' fun_!'--that's it! how stupid of me!--`and my dear pet has been such an a.s.s'--Eh! for shame, brother."

"Don't you think, dear, Martha, that there's some more of that word on the next line?"

"So there is, I'm _so_ stupid--`istance'--It's not rightly divided though--`as-sistance and a comfort to me.' I knew it couldn't be a.s.s."

"So did I. Ailie an a.s.s! precious child!"

"`Now, good-bye t'ye, my dear la.s.sies,'

"`Ever your affectionate brother,'

"(Dear Fellow!)

"`GEORGE DUNNING.'"

Now it chanced that the s.h.i.+p which conveyed the above letter across the Atlantic was a slow sailer and was much delayed by contrary winds. And it also chanced--for odd coincidences do happen occasionally in human affairs--that the vessel in which Captain Dunning with Ailie and his crew embarked some weeks later was a fast-sailing s.h.i.+p, and was blown across the sea with strong favouring gales. Hence it fell out that the first vessel entered port on Sunday night, and the second cast anchor in the same port on Monday morning.

The green-painted door, therefore, of the yellow-faced cottage, had scarcely recovered from the a.s.sault of the letter-carrier, when it was again struck violently by the impatient Captain Dunning.

Miss Martha, who had just concluded and refolded the letter, screamed "Oh!" and leaped up.

Miss Jane did the same, with this difference, that she leaped up before screaming "Oh!" instead of after doing so. Then both ladies, hearing voices outside, rushed towards the door of the parlour with the intention of flying to their rooms and there carefully arranging their tall white caps and clean white collars, and keeping the early visitor, whoever he or she might be, waiting fully a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, before they should descend, stiffly, starchly, and ceremoniously, to receive him--or her.

These intentions were frustrated by the servant-girl, who opened the green-painted door and let in the captain, who rushed into the parlour and rudely kissed his speechless sisters.

"Can it be?" gasped Martha.

Jane had meant to gasp "Impossible!" but seeing Ailie at that moment bound into Martha's arms, she changed her intention, uttered a loud scream instead, and fell down flat upon the floor under the impression that she had fainted. Finding, however, that this was not the case, she got up again quickly--ignorant of the fact that the tall cap had come off altogether in the fall--and stood before her sister weeping, and laughing, and wringing her hands, and waiting for her turn.

But it did not seem likely to come soon, for Martha continued to hug Ailie, whom she had raised entirely from the ground, with pa.s.sionate fervour. Seeing this, and feeling that to wait was impossible, Jane darted forward, threw her arms round Ailie--including Martha, as an unavoidable consequence--and pressed the child's back to her throbbing bosom.

Between the two poor Ailie was nearly suffocated. Indeed, she was compelled to scream, not because she wished to, but because Martha and Jane squeezed a scream out of her. The scream acted on the former as a reproof. She resigned Ailie to Jane, flung herself recklessly on the sofa, and kicked.

Meanwhile, Captain Dunning stood looking on, rubbing his hands,-- slapping his thighs, and blowing his nose. The servant-girl also stood looking on doing nothing--her face was a perfect blaze of amazement.

"Girl," said the captain, turning suddenly towards her, "is breakfast ready?"

"Yes," gasped the girl.

"Then fetch it."

The girl did not move.

"D'ye hear?" cried the captain.

"Ye-es."

"Then look alive."

The captain followed this up with a roar and such an indescribably ferocious demonstration that the girl fled in terror to the culinary regions, where she found the cat breakfasting on a pat of b.u.t.ter. The girl yelled, and flung first a saucepan, and after that the lid of a teapot, at the thief. She failed, of course, in this effort to commit murder, and the cat vanished.

Breakfast was brought, but, excepting in the captain's case, breakfast was not eaten. What between questioning, and crying, and hysterical laughing, and replying, and gasping, explaining, misunderstanding, exclaiming, and choking, the other members of the party that breakfasted that morning in the yellow cottage with the much-abused green door, did little else than upset tea-cups and cream-pots, and sputter eggs about, and otherwise make a mess of the once immaculate tablecloth.

"Oh, Aunt Martha!" exclaimed Ailie, in the midst of a short pause in the storm, "I'm _so_ very, very, _very_ glad to be home!"

The child said this with intense fervour. No one but he who has been long, long away from the home of his childhood, and had come back after having despaired of ever seeing it again, can imagine with what deep fervour she said it, and then burst into tears.

Aunt Jane at that moment was venturing to swallow her first mouthful of tea, so she gulped and choked, and Aunt Martha spent the next five minutes in violently beating the poor creature's back, as if she deemed choking a serious offence which merited severe punishment. As for the captain, that unfeeling monster went on grinning from ear to ear, and eating a heavy breakfast, as if nothing had happened. But a close observer might have noticed a curious process going on at the starboard side of his weather-beaten nose.

In one of his many desperate encounters with whales, Captain Dunning had had the end of a harpoon thrust accidentally into the prominent member of his face just above the bridge. A permanent little hole was the result, and on the morning of which we write, a drop of water got into that hole continually, and when it rolled out--which it did about once every two minutes--and fell into the captain's tea-cup, it was speedily replaced by another drop, which trickled into the depths of that small cavern on the starboard side of the captain's nose. We don't pretend to account for that curious phenomenon. We merely record the fact.

While the breakfast party were yet in this April mood, a knock was heard at the outer door.

"Visitors!" said Martha, with a look that would have led a stranger to suppose that she held visitors in much the same estimation as tax-gatherers.

"How awkward!" exclaimed Aunt Jane.

"Send 'em away, girl," cried the captain. "We're all engaged. Can't see any one to-day."

In a moment the servant-girl returned.

"He says he _must_ see you."

"See who?" cried the captain.

"See _you_, sir."

"Must he; then he shan't. Tell him that."

"Please, sir, he says he won't go away."

"Won't he?"

As he said this the captain set his teeth, clenched his fists, and darted out of the room.