"What, married, my lad? and brought me thy little one?" she said.
Wat told the story, and taking up her bundle, he added, "When she's able to be put forward in life, I shall lay out the money on her, and give her them clothes; but till then I shall look to her like my own."
Granny remonstrated. The workhouse was the proper place. He might marry, and then what could he do with this child? This was right and reasonable, as Wat allowed, but he affirmed that it was "righter and more reasonabler" that he should keep his promise. Granny, finding him positive, consented to let Gooseberry live with her; and though he had a misgiving that she wouldn't have a lively time of it, yet he felt she would be safe for the present. So he emptied his pockets most liberally of pay and prize-money, and gave the child into her care.
"Ye see, mother," he said, the night before he left, "I am bound to have her learned to read, and to read this Book; and I'm bound, likewise, to learn to read the Book myself, seeing as I promised I'd do both them things. Now nobody can be at sea and on shore at the same time; and by that rule, how can I leave the Book for her, and take it for myself?"
Wat's puzzle was set at rest by Granny's telling him that she would teach Gooseberry out of her Bible, which would be the same thing, as all Bibles were exactly alike.
"I reckon so," he said, with a perplexed look, comparing Sisky's with the old baize-covered one on the settle. "But there's a lot of signs and marks in this 'un," pointing to red ink notes on the margin, and underlinings of several passages.
Granny inspected it, and shook her head.
"I don't know nought of the writing, lad, but the printing is the same as mine," she said; and reading the opening of Genesis from both the Books, she succeeded in persuading him that they were one and the same, except the red ink.
"Heave to, then!" he cried. "I'll have Sisky's; it's trimmer to haul about than yonder woolly-backed one, and I'll try to spell it out when I get aboard again."