‘Not as I knows of, sir. He may be dead or livin’. It’s all the same to me now. That was the time I used to pray, Mr Egerton, night and day, that the little feller I was so proud on might grow up a good man and a good son to me and a comfort to my old age, and when I lost him I chucked up religion altogether.’
‘How did you lose him?’
‘In the crudest of ways, sir. He had grow’d up beside me five years, and I had done everythink for him; and when he’d put his two little arms round my neck and kiss me, and look so like his poor mother—who was the only sweetheart I ever had, Mr Egerton—I used to thank the Lord, with tears in my eyes, for His goodness to me. But it was all a delusion, sir.’
‘Tell me the end of it.’
‘The end of it was that, when my pretty Dickey was a smart little feller of about ten years old, I got him a place as ship-boy aboard the ‘Lady Bird,’ and we sailed for the Brazils together, as proud and ’appy as the days was long. And I was a teachin’ the boy everythink, Mr Egerton, and he was gettin’ that ’cute and handy—when, in an evil moment, that man whom we all thought dead and buried, turned up again somewhere down by Rio Janeiro, and claimed his boy of me.’
‘What! the father?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course he had the right to do it, and that’s what the skipper tried to make me understand; but it broke my heart entirely. He thought he’d make money out of the lad’s wages, and so he took him away from me, who was just like a father to him; and his screams, as we parted, have never left my ears since. And when I heard afterwards that the brute ill-treated Dickey, just as he’d done his poor mammy, I nearly went mad. The men calls me sulky, and “Old Contrairy,” and sich like names; but many’s the time when they think me cross, I’m only dreaming over that time ag’in and cursin’ them as brought me to sich a pitch. I shall never see my pretty Dickey ag’in, sir, till I meets ’im up above; and I shall owe Robert Hudson a grudge to the day of my death for robbin’ me of him in that there cruel manner.’
‘Who did you say?’ cried Egerton, starting up in his berth.
‘Please to lie down, sir? The doctor will be arter me if I lets you knock about in that manner. The name slipped out unawares, for ’tain’t of no use raking it up ag’in. It has nothin’ to do with my story.’
‘But, pray, tell it me again?’