My mother had gone into the back kitchen to wash, which was the cause (not having been summoned) of her being so long absent.
Virginia, who had become quite sociable, was passing her little fingers through my father’s large whiskers, while he every now and then put his pipe out of his mouth to kiss her. I had the porter-pot on my knees, my father having told me to take a swig, when my mother entered the room.
“Well, Mr Benjamin, I shouldn’t wonder—but—Oh! mercy, it’s he!” cried my mother. “Oh! be quick—sal-wolatily!”
“Sall who? What the devil does she mean?” said my father, rising up, and putting my sister off his knee.
“I never heard of her,” replied Ben, also getting up; “but Mistress Saunders seems taken all aback, anyhow. Jack, run and fetch a bucket of water!”
“Jack, stay where you are,” cried my mother, springing from the chair on which she had thrown herself. “Oh, dear me! the shock was so sudden—I’m so flustered. Who’d have thought to have seen you?”
“Are you her brother?” inquired Ben.
“No; but I’m her husband,” replied my father.
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve heard that she had one—but I’ll be off, for Mistress Saunders is too genteel to kiss, I see, before company.” Ben then took up his stick and left the house.
It may be as well here to remark, that during his absence, my father had fallen in with one of the men who had been employed in the press-gang, and from him he learnt that a woman had given the information by which he was taken. He made the man, who was present when my mother called upon the officer, describe her person, and the description in every point was so accurate, that my father had no doubt in his mind but that it was my mother who had betrayed him: this knowledge had for years rankled in his breast, and he had come home, not only from a wish to see how things were going on, but to reproach my mother with her treachery.