The couple bore every appearance of homely thrift and simplicity of character; of being, in short, precisely the kind of people Touchtone had hoped. It is, perhaps, needless to say that Philip’s narrative was only of the circumstances since the hour of departure from the Old Province. Mr. Belmont and his persecution he left till a more convenient season.
“An’ you mean to tell me that that poor boy an’ you have been shut up here two days? No other soul about the place? An’ he sick on your hands half the time?” gasped the distressed Mrs. Obed.
“That’s just what I mean,” replied Touchtone.
“Never heard such an astonishin’ story in my life,” repeated Probasco. “What would you ’a’ done, though, if you hadn’t brought up here? Well, it stumps me; that’s all.”
“The hand of the Lord’s in it, no mistake!” declared Mrs. Obed. “I can’t say how welcome you’ve been to any thing an’ to every thing of ours that the old house there’s got inside it. You couldn’t ’a’ better pleased me an’ my husband here, Mr. Tombstone—I mean Mr. Touchtone—I b’lieve you said that was your name, didn’t you?—than by just makin’ free of every blessed corner of it. But dear, dear! If I’d only been to home.”
“Yes, it’s queer luck! Wife an’ I’ve both been over on shore. We had to go across to Chantico to the funeral of a nephew of ours, that died very sudden. We stuck fast there by my bein’ sick. The very time that such a thing as this came straight up to our doors!”
“Queer luck?” repeated the farmer’s wife. “You’d better just say queer Providence, Obed! It’s been awful unhandy for you, Mr. Touchtone—made things so much harder for you an’ the little boy. But I guess if Providence could save you both bein’ dashed overboard with those poor souls in that boat, he could help you to get along with a lot o’ my stale stuff to eat, an’ not a hand to help you to any thing better. Our house wide open, was it? Well, I don’t know where you’d ’a’ got in if’t been us left it last! But,” she continued, turning in sudden vexation to her husband, “that’s the very identical good-bye time old Murtagh’ll play us such a trick! After all his straight up an’ down promises that he’d never leave the place one minute! An’ the cow, too!”
“Yes, I’ve had enough of Murtagh,” assented the farmer, sharply, “an’ I guess we’ll find the obligations on our side, sir. Murtagh’s a man we’ve had on the place to help us, an’ he don’t appear to have no more responsibleness than a grasshopper, let alone his drinking. Wife an’ I’ve been in a worry the hull time we was obliged to stay across the strait. But we didn’t look for his acting this way.”
It appeared that the derelict Murtagh had indeed been left in charge by his master; and that that neglectful hireling of the household must have scarcely waited for his employers’ backs to be turned than he had betaken himself to his own little skiff and gone off shoreward, too. “Most likely, on one of his regular high old sprees!” surmised the exasperated farmer. “This is the end of Pat Murtagh’s working for me!”
“Well, come, come, don’t let’s stand another minute here,” said Mrs. Probasco, realizing that the necessary explanations on both sides were finished; “that boy you’ve got with you mustn’t be left alone. Perhaps he’s not so sick as you think. I hope he’s been asleep while we’ve been puttin’ you through such a long catechism. Let’s all hurry, to make up for it. Obed, don’t you rattle that gate; an’ do you take off your boots before you get to the kitchen door. Thanky, Mr. Touchtone, let them things lay just where they be; there’s nobody to steal ’em, you know. Come along, quick, both of you.”