CHAPTER XXIV.
FANCY BRINGS NEWS.
"Which," Mrs Bowldler reported to Fancy, who had left her master's sick-bed to pay a fleeting visit to Palmerston's, "the treatment was drastic for a growin' child. First of all Mrs Bosenna, that never had a child of her own, sent down to the cabin for the mustard that had been left over from the Sailin' Committee's sangwidges, and mixed up a drink with it and a little cold water. Which the results was nil; that is to say, pecuniarily speakin'. Then somebody fetched along Mr Clogg the vet. from Tregarrick, that had come over for the day to judge the horses, and he said as plain salt-and-water was worth all the mustard in the world, so they made the poor boy swallow the best part of a pint, and he brought up eighteenpence."
"Saints alive! But I thought you told me—"
"So I did: two solid golden sufferins. And that," said Mrs Bowldler, "was for some time the most astonishin' part of the business. Two solid golden sufferins: and low!—as the sayin' is—low and behold, eighteen pence in small silver!"
"Little enough too, for a miracle!" mused Fancy.
"It encouraged 'em to go on. Captain Hocken—he's a humane gentleman, too, and never graspin'—no, never in his life!—but I suppose he'd begun to get interested,—Captain Hocken ups and suggests as they were wastin' time, mixin' table-salt and water when there was the wide ocean itself overside, to be had for the dippin'. So they tried sea-water."
"My poor Pammy.'"
"Don't you start a-pityin' me," gasped a voice, faint but defiant, from the bed. "If I die, I die. But I got the account to balance."
"I disremember what sum—er—resulted that time," confessed Mrs
Bowldler; "my memory not bein' what it was."