“Do you want any beer or ’baccy?” said I. “I’ll run and get you some, if you give me the money, and bring back your change all right.”
“Well, so you shall, Jack, my boy,” replied he; and he gave me a shilling. I soon returned with the pipes, tobacco, and beer, and offered him the change, which he told me to keep, to buy apples with it. Virginia was on the knee of my father, who was coaxing and caressing her, and my mother had not yet returned from the back kitchen. I felt naturally quite friendly towards a man who had given me more money than I ever possessed in my life; and I took my stool and sat beside him; while, with my sister on his knee, and his porter before him, my father smoked his pipe.
“Does your mother often beat you, Jack?” said my father, taking the pipe out of his mouth.
“Yes, when I does wrong,” replied I.
“Oh! only when you do wrong—eh?”
“Well, she says I do wrong; so I suppose I do.”
“You’re a good boy,” replied my father. “Does she ever beat you, dear?” said he to Virginia.
“Oh, no!” interrupted I; “she never beats sister, she loves her too much; but she don’t love me.”
My father puffed away, and said no more.
I must inform the reader that my father’s person was very much altered from what I have described it to have been at the commencement of this narrative. He was now a boatswain’s mate, and wore a silver whistle hung round, his neck by a lanyard, and with which little Virginia was then playing. He had grown more burly in appearance, spreading, as sailors usually do, when they arrive to about the age of forty; and moreover, he had a dreadful scar from a cutlass wound, received in boarding, which had divided the whole left side of his face, from the eyebrow to the chin. This gave him a very fierce expression; still he was a fine looking man, and his pig-tail had grown to a surprising length and size. His ship, as I afterwards found out, had not been paid off, but he had obtained a fortnight’s leave of absence, while she was refitting. We were all very sociable together, without there being the least idea, on the part of my sister and myself, with whom we were in company, when in rolled old Ben the Whaler.