“There’ll be none that’s better,” observes Tom Bryce, “going in and oot o’ Solway Firth.” Then, eyeing the yawl: “He’ll win to the creek’s mouth on the next reach to sta’board.”
Gardener Paul joins Mr. Younger and the fisherman, Tom Bryce.
“We were talking of your son,” says Mr. Younger to Gardener Paul. “What say ye, mon; will ye apprentice him? I’ll send him with Dick Bennison, in my new brig Friendship, to the Virginias and Jamaica.”
John Paul, gardener to the laird, Robert Craik, is a dull man, notably thick of wit, and slow.
“The Virginias!” he repeats. “My son William has been there these sixteen year. He’s head man for my kinsman Jones, on his plantation by the Rappahannock. If Jack sails with Dick Bennison, he’ll meet William that he’s never seen.”
“He’ll see his brother for sure,” returns Mr. Younger. “The Friendship goes from Whitehaven to Urbana, and that’s not a dozen miles down the Rappahannock from your cousin’s plantation.”
The yawl has come safely into the creek’s mouth, and lies rocking at her moorings as lightly as a gull. The lad leaps ashore, and is patted on the back by the fisherman in praise of his seamanship. He smiles through the salt water that drips from his face; for beating to windward is not the driest point of sailing, and the lad is spray-soaked from head to heel.
“And may I go, father?
“This is Mr. Younger, Jack,” says Gardener Paul, as the lad conies up. “He wants ye to sail ‘prentice with Dick Bennison, in the new brig.‘’ The difference to show between Gardener Paul and little Jack Paul, as the pair stand together on the quay, goes far to justify those innuendoes of the scandalous Lucky. Gardener Paul’s heavy peasant face possesses nothing to mark, on his part, any blood-nearness to the boy, whose olive skin, large brown eyes, clean profile and dark hair like silk, speak only of the patrician.
“And may I go, father?” asks Jack, a flush breaking eagerly through the tan on his cheek.