We must now bestow some attention upon Mr. Smithers and his family, whom we have left in the background since Tommy took his trip to Liverpool.
When Charley Barker stepped down the gangway, in obedience to the summons of the bell which ordered all on shore, he did not doubt that Tommy was following him.
But when the communication between the steamer and the dock was shut off he began to look curiously around him, for nothing whatever was to be seen of his friend.
The ship slowly left her dock, and Charley Barker became aware of the fact that, for some reason altogether unknown to him, Tommy had not left with the other friends of the passengers.
Satisfied with this conviction, he returned quickly to his father's, and having reported the safe bestowal of the coffin, hurried to Mr. Smithers' house and communicated the facts of the case.
"Silly boy!" cried Mrs. Smithers. "He is always doing something stupid."
"Well, ma'am, all the boys say he's a little soft."
"I am in hopes he will grow out of that," said his mother. "But tell me, Charley, do you think he'll come to any harm?"
"I guess not, ma'am. They'll make him work, that's all, and the American consul at Liverpool is bound to send him back."
Charley Barker now retired, and the unhappy mother tried to comfort herself with the reflection that the boy was on board an English ship, bound to a well-known port, and among officers who would be kind to the poor waif whom an accident had cast among them.