“Overboard;” and he told him the story. “Are you busy, Uncle Isaac?”
“Busy? No; you know I can’t keep still. I happened to have some walnut, and was turning out some ox-bows, just to keep myself from idleness.”
“I have finished Captain Rhines’s boat, and came over to see if you wouldn’t like to take a sail with me in my boat.”
“Shouldn’t like anything better. But come, go into the house. It’s past the middle of the forenoon. We’ll have an early dinner, rig you out with some dry clothes, and start right off. We can take a bite with us, and come back when we like. There’s no moon, but it will be bright starlight.”
Charlie was a great favorite with Hannah Murch. No sooner was she made aware of his misfortune than she exerted herself to put matters to rights.
There happened to be in the house a shirt and waistcoat that his nephew, Isaac Murch, had left there. She cut off a part of Uncle Isaac’s breeches, and hunted up a fisherman’s knit frock.
“It’s no matter how you look,” said she; “there’s nobody to look at you in the woods and on the water. Salt water won’t hurt your hat or clothes one mite. I’ll press them with a hot iron while they are damp, and iron the hat. That ain’t wet inside, and there’s no nap on it. I’ll oil the shoes before they are quite dry, and rub the buckles with vinegar and ashes, wash your shirt, and do up the bosom, and nobody will know that anything has happened.”
“I make you a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Murch.”
“Not a bit of it! I love boys, and often wish I had one to make me trouble. I’ve brought up a whole family of them, but they are all gone to shift for themselves, and sometimes Isaac and I are real lonesome.”
They took Uncle Isaac’s stuffed seal with them, and their guns, and set out.