"Me brother--Captain Dresser," she said smiling. "I"m sure you ought to know each other by this time, if you don"t already!"
"Glad to meet you, sir, glad to meet you," cried the Captain in his bluff hearty way. "I"ve often heard of you, especially since Master Bob here has been down at Southsea."
"Ah! I have to thank you for the kind way in which you"ve made their stay here pleasant for him and my little girl," rejoined the other warmly as the two shook hands. "But, there was little need, Captain Dresser, for my sister to introduce you. She"s told me so much about you, that I seem to have known you already for years!"
"Oh, yes," said the Captain; "your sister is one of my oldest friends."
"What"s that you"re saying about my being an old friend?" exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, pretending to be indignant. "You speak as if I were an aged person; but, I"d have you to know, that, although I"m not quite a chicken, sure, I"m not as old as old Methuselah yet!"
"No, no, I didn"t mean that," chuckled the Captain; and turning to her brother he remarked on the likeness between him and Mrs Gilmour. "It is absolutely striking, by Jove!"
"We"re almost twins," replied he innocently; "only, I"m ten years older!"
The Captain burst into a regular roar of laughter at this; his sides shaking and his face getting so red that it seemed as if he were going to have a fit of apoplexy.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "you ought to be twins!"
It was only then that the other perceived the slip he had made, as did his sister, and the two joined in the Captain"s mirth; while Master Bob also lent his help, although witless of what the general merriment was about, the deep ho-ho-ho! of his father being even more contagious than the catching laugh of his old friend the Captain.
"Sure, Dugald, you"re the same careless fellow still," cried Mrs Gilmour, as soon as she was able to get out a word. "As me poor dear Ted used to say, you"re an Irishman to the backbone. Sure you never open your mouth but you put your foot in it!"
"That is what I"m always telling him, too," said her sister-in-law, whom the laughter in the hall, renewed with such force when Mrs Gilmour, in trying to set matters straight, made another Irish bull as big as her brother"s, had brought out of the parlour, accompanied by Nellie.
"Dugald is really incorrigible!"
"That"s just what Mrs Gilmour says I am," observed the Captain, bowing between his chuckles. "You must let me introduce myself. I don"t need anybody to introduce you, ma"am; for I"m sure from your sweet soft voice alone that you are little missy"s mother. She and I, you know, are sworn friends!"
Mrs Strong smiled; and, if the Captain had called her voice a sweet one, he could find no words in which to describe the light that stole into her eyes, irradiating the face now.
"I see you can pay compliments, Captain Dresser, although you are not an Irishman," she said pleasantly, caressing Nell, who in the joy of seeing her mother again had never left her side. "I suppose that"s the reason this young lady has lost her heart to you?"
"You"d better be wary of him, Edith," interposed Mrs Gilmour jokingly.
"He"s a terrible old flirt with all the ladies, young and old alike!
But, wouldn"t you like to go upstairs and take your things off?"
"No, thanks, not till it"s time for bed; and, it must be very near that now."
"Oh, the day"s yet young!" cried her hospitable hostess, leading the way back into the parlour. "We didn"t expect you before to-morrow, or next day at the earliest; and Nell, indeed, stopped in all the morning to finish her letter in time, so that you could get it to-night in London, as she thought. Still, my dear, I dare say we"ll be able to find you something to eat, and your rooms shall be got ready for you as soon as possible."
"Please, mum," said Sarah, who was still waiting in the hall, at hand for whatever the guests might need, "they are quite ready, mum!"
"Ready!" repeated Mrs Gilmour surprised. "The spare rooms?"
"Yes, mum," replied Sarah, dropping a curtsey, with the proud consciousness of having done well in her mistress"s sight. "Me and Molly went up to the rooms and did what you told me I"d have to do to- morrow, as soon as ever Mr and Mrs Strong came, mum; so now they"re quite ready. Molly, too, went back afterwards to her kitchen, and is warming up the curry, in case you should like it hot for supper."
"You"ve done quite right, Sarah, and just as I would have directed if I"d been at home. Tell Molly from me, that there is nothing my brother is fonder of than curry; and that she may send up supper as soon as she"s got it ready."
Sarah hurried off to quicken the preparations of her fellow-servant below, her movements somewhat accelerated by Bob shouting out the cruel refrain of the "forget-me-not poem!"
"Ah, but," put in the Captain, "the "good Sarah" did not forget her head this time, at any rate! You"ll have to alter your poem, Master Bob!"
Then, of course, ensued a lot of explanations, which led up to an account of the picnic, the elaborate description of which Nellie had taken such pains to write in her letter home to her mother.
All of which pains, alas! were thrown away; for here was her mother by her side, while her graphic letter was lying uselessly in the box at the post-office!
A series of questions and answers then followed rapidly in reference to Bob and Miss Nell"s doings since they had been down by the sea; interspersed with sundry inquiries after Blinkie, the old dissipated jackdaw left behind at home, and Snuffles, the black cat, who was a martyr to chronic influenza, whence his very appropriate name!
Rover, who was wild with delight on seeing his old master and mistress when he came in damp and dripping from his experiences of the wreck, was not altogether forgotten, you may be sure, just because London friends were thought of! On the contrary, he received many pats and caresses besides getting an unexpected supper; a thing not generally in Rover"s line, but which, none the less, did not seem to come amiss to him on the present occasion.
By this time, it was very late, the "tattoo" having sounded long since, summoning all truant soldiers into barracks; so, the Captain, declaring that his landlady would "haul him over the coals" for stopping out so late, stumped away chuckling down the parade with his malacca cane.
The exhausted household at "the Moorings" then went to bed in peace, tired out with their day"s doings--tired even of talk--Bob and Nell composing in their dreams a fresh version, as the old sailor had humorously suggested, of Sarah"s celebrated picnic poem; in which, instead of their original quatrain, "bed" now rhymed with "head," in lieu of the unfortunately forgotten "bread," and "curry" with "hurry!"
The next day, both Mr and Mrs Dugald Strong said that they were too fatigued to do anything else save lie in the sun and bask on the beach; but the following morning, the Captain, insisting on their seeing the sights of the place, took them all down to the harbour, when they went on board the _Victory_, Nelson"s old flagship, which Mrs Gilmour said she had been over "at laste a hundred times before," although she accompanied them now "for company"s sake, sure!"
If a hackneyed theme to her, this visit to the historic vessel was, however, replete with interest to the others; being full of floating memories of the past, in which the grand figure of the hero of Trafalgar stood out in relief with that wonderfully blood-stirring last signal of his, like a laurel wreath encircling his brows-- "England expects every man this day to do his duty!"
To Bob and Nellie it was especially delightful to see the real ship in which Nelson had fought so gallantly that battle of which they had read, knowing, by heart almost, the princ.i.p.al incidents of the glorious day, when the British fleet "crumpled up the combined squadrons of France and Spain"; and, with the able a.s.sistance of the Captain, who made an admirable cicerone, they could, standing there on board the _Victory_, imagine themselves in the thick of the celebrated sea-fight. Aye, boarding the _Santissima Trinidada_, with the guns banging about them and the sulphurous gunpowder-smoke filling the air around, hiding everything beyond the ponderous hulls of the enemy"s three-deckers between which, yard-arm to yard-arm, the old _Victory_ lay!
"Here it was," said the Captain, pointing out the spot on the quarter- deck below the p.o.o.p, close to a hatchway, and marked by a copper plate let into the planking, bearing a short inscription commemorating the fact, "that Nelson was standing when that villainous marksman in the _Redoutable"s_ mizzen-top hit him, catching sight of the medals on his breast; for, he would stick "em on, in spite of the advice of Hardy, who was his flag-captain, you know."
"That was very foolish of him," interposed Mrs Gilmour. "I suppose he did it to show off, like most of you men; for you"re a consayted lot!
The same as you punish your malacca cane, Captain!"
"Not a bit of it!" retorted the old sailor indignantly, up in arms at once at the slightest aspersion on his hero"s fame. "He wore his medals because, ma"am, in the first place, he wasn"t a bit ashamed of them; and, secondly, to encourage his men--there, ma"am!"
"That"s a settler for you, Polly!" said her brother quizzingly; but, he didn"t laugh, the Captain appeared so very much in earnest in speaking of Nelson, whom he regarded with the deepest veneration. "I don"t think, my dear, though, it"s a subject for joking!"
"I"m very sorry I spoke, sure," pleaded she in extenuation of her offence, "I didn"t mean any harm!"
"Well, well, let it pa.s.s," replied the Captain, dismissing the painful point in dispute with a wave of his arm and continuing his description of the tragic end of the conqueror of Trafalgar, which Mrs Gilmour"s interruption had somewhat confused in his mind. "We were just where he was shot, eh?"
"Yes," replied Bob, who had been hanging on his words and was all attention and had not lost a word of the narrative. "The French marksman saw his medals."
"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old sailor, "making sail again with a fair wind," as he expressed it in his nautical way. "Well, then, the fellow who shot him was potted immediately afterwards, you"ll be glad to hear, by one of our "jollies"--marines, you know--on the p.o.o.p, who saw the chap aiming at Nelson, but fired too late to prevent the fatal leaden messenger doing its deadly work! The poor Admiral sank down here, just by that hatchway, and there used to be the stain of his blood, as they said, on the old timbers of the deck; but those have been removed, and, indeed, they"ve restored the ship so often that there"s hardly one of her old planks left in her save this with the memorial plate here."
"But, what was done after Nelson was wounded?" inquired Nellie, who had been listening as intently as Bob. "Didn"t they do anything to help him?"
"Why, they took him down to the c.o.c.k-pit, as they called the midshipmen"s berth on the lower deck, where we"re going now," replied the Captain, leading the way down the companion and an interminable series of other ladders afterwards, as if they were descending to the kelson, the s.p.a.ce getting all the narrower and darker as they went down.
"They took him below--to die!"
Here, in a small, confined apartment, which Bob"s father said looked "like the condemned cell at Newgate," and whose sole apparent advantage, as the Captain explained, was in its being below the water-line, and therefore the only safe place in a ship before the days of torpedoes and submarine warfare, he went on to tell the children, the hero breathed his last; his dying moments eased by the knowledge that he had done his duty to his country and cheered by the news that the foe was vanquished, Hardy making him smile by saying how many ships of the line had struck their colours already or been destroyed. Nell shivered.
"Let us go upstairs," she said, in a very depressed tone, in keeping with the melancholy a.s.sociations of the place. "Let us go upstairs!"
The Captain laughed out at this.
"You"d make a sailor faint, if he heard you ever use that expression!"
he cried. "The idea of speaking about "upstairs" on board a ship, and your uncle a sailor, too, missy!"