"He can polish up your window, Bessy, and carry your basket, and get your garden into trim order," answered the sailor with cheerful good humour.
And leaving the cottage for a few moments, Ned soon returned with a brick, the weight of which as effectually fastened down the sheet as if he had had a left hand to rest upon it.
"Safe at anchor at last!" cried Ned. "But this is a clumsy way of getting over the difficulty. Necessity, folk say, is the mother of invention. I'll get the carpenter, as soon as I have the ready rhino to pay for it, to screw on some bit of timber to this maimed stump of mine, with something like a hook at the end; 'twill serve almost as well as a hand, and save me and my friends no end of trouble."
"Not a bad thought!" cried Bessy, who was apt to grumble at having to give the little assistance which the one-armed sailor required. "You needn't wait, Ned, till you've the money. Bill Jones, who works at the carpenter's, is a handy lad, and owes me a deal of kindness for nursing his mother in sickness. He'll manage to look out a good bit of hard wood and a hook, will make what you want cleverly, and never say a word about payment."
"I'd rather wait till I've shot in my locker," said Ned. "The poor lad's time is his money."
"His master's rather," observed Bessy. "But old Stone is an easy-going man, and does not keep a very sharp look out. Why Bill Jones—a good fellow is he—made a little chest of drawers for his mother, all of mahogany wood, and I don't believe that his master so much as guessed that he had not been working from morning till night every day in the week at the fittings in Sir Lacy Barton's study."
Ned had begun his letter, but he raised his head, and the ink dried on his pen as he inquired, "Do you mean that he helped himself to his master's wood, and used up the time which belonged to his master, to make a chest for his mother? And do you call him 'good' for this?"
"I do call him good, and clever too!" answered Bessy, sharply. "Isn't it right for a lad to care for his mother? And wouldn't it be right for him to do a good turn for a poor maimed sailor, who has lost his arm serving the Queen?"
"Would it be right in Bill Jones to carry off Sir Lacy's purse to give to his mother; or, if I chanced to be in want, to help a poor maimed Jack-tar like me?"
"How can you ask such idle questions?" cried Bessy Peele, in a tone of contempt. "Why, if Bill Jones did a thing like that, he'd be clapped into jail directly."