“No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us;
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.”
“Yes, yes,” replied the old woman; “no eye to watch, indeed. He may be in sickness and in sorrow; he may be wounded, or dying of a fever; and there’s no mother’s eye to watch over him. As to all the earth being forgot, I won’t believe that Tom has forgotten his mother.”
Old Tom replied—
“Seasons may roll,
But the true soul
Burns the same wherever it goes.”
“So it does, Tom—so it does; and he’s thinking this moment of his father and mother, I do verily believe, and he loves us more than ever.”
“So I believe,” replied old Tom—“that is, if he hasn’t anything better to do. But there’s a time for all things; and when a man is doing his duty as a seaman, he mustn’t let his thoughts wander. Never fear, old woman: he’ll be back again.
“There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To take care of the life of poor Jack.”
“God grant it! God grant it!” replied the old woman, wiping her eyes with her apron, and then resuming her netting.
“He seems,” continued she, “by his letters, to be over-fond of that girl, Mary Stapleton—and I sometimes think that she cares not a little for him; but she’s never of one mind long. I didn’t like to see her flaunting and flirting so with the soldiers, and at the same time Tom says that she writes that she cares for nobody but him.”
“Women are—women! that’s sartin,” replied old Tom, musing for a time, and then showing that his thoughts were running on his son, by bursting out—