Mrs. Peele was a tall bony woman, with a habitual stoop, clad in a rusty black dress, with a cap which was rustier still. Broad lines of grey streaked her hair, and Ned's first feeling was that of painful surprise at the change which years had made. He did not stop, however, to dwell on the past.
"Holloa, Bessy! Don't you know me?" he exclaimed, as he quickened his pace, and the next minute Mrs. Peele had run out, with her bare arms covered with soap-suds, to welcome her younger brother.
She was followed by a lad about ten or eleven years of age; a sharp, wiry boy, whose pointed upturned nose, quick little black eyes, and restless manner, somehow suggested to the sailor's mind the idea of a weasel. Ned shook him heartily by the hand on hearing that this was his nephew Dan; and, with a heart glowing with pleasure at being once more in a home, the seaman entered the cottage accompanied by the Peeles.
"Now, Dan, you take your uncle, and show him his room, while I wring these out, and get a bit of something ready for dinner," said Bessy. "I hardly looked for you so early, Ned," she added, addressing herself to her brother.
"I was up with the lark," answered the sailor.
Dan, looking up with curiosity in his keen small eyes towards the stranger, whom he scarcely yet ventured to call "uncle," led the way to the back of the cottage, where was a kind of garden—if a place could deserve that name where nothing but sickly cabbages seemed to grow, with a full crop of chickweed and groundsel between. A small wood-house adjoined the cottage, and over this was a little loft, to be reached by a rough sort of ladder.
"We're to go up the hatchway, are we?" said Ned, mounting the ladder with a lightness and rapidity which surprised his nephew. He had to stoop his curly head low as he passed through the entrance, the door of which appeared never to have been intended to fit, since even when shut it admitted as much light as the small one-paned window of greenish glass, with a thick knob in the middle. The loft was very small, with walls unpapered, and rafters uncovered; a dirty mattress lay on the dirtier floor, and a musty scent pervaded the place.
"I can't say much for the berth," thought Ned; "it's not big enough to swing a cat in, and doesn't look as if the planks had ever been holystoned. I must set things a little ship-shape. Bessy, poor soul, has enough to keep her busy with her washing; I must try if I can't make my one hand do the business of two."
The man-of-war's seaman, accustomed to spotless cleanliness and neatness, looked around on the miserable den with a mixture of disgust and good humour.
"I'll rub up the bull's eye," he said, "and get that door to fasten with something better than a piece of old rope; and I'll try to knock up a bit of a shelf in that corner, for I've a few books in that bundle of mine. We'll soon have all right and trim as a captain's cabin!"