“It is the very thing that I should like,” replied I; “and many thanks to you, Anderson.”
“And it’s exactly what I should wish also,” replied my father. “So that job’s jobbed, as the saying is.”
After this arrangement, I walked away as proud as if I had been an emancipated slave: that very evening I announced my intention of resigning my office of “Poor Jack,” and named as my successor the boy with whom I had fought so desperately to obtain it, when the prospect was held out to me, by old Ben, of my becoming Poor Jack—for ever.
Chapter Twenty.
Much ado about nothing; or, a specimen of modern patronage.
I communicated to my mother and Virginia my father’s intentions relative to my future employ, and was not surprised to find my mother very much pleased with the intelligence, for she had always considered my situation of “Poor Jack” as disgracing her family—declaring it the “most ungenteelest” of all occupations. Perhaps she was not only glad of my giving up the situation, but also of my quitting her house. My father desired me to wear my Sunday clothes during the week, and ordered me a new suit for my best, which he paid for out of the money which he had placed in the hands of the Lieutenant of the Hospital; and I was very much surprised to perceive my mother cutting out half a dozen new shirts for me, which she and Virginia were employed making up during the evenings. Not that my mother told me who the shirts were for—she said nothing; but Virginia whispered it to me; my mother could not be even gracious to me: nevertheless, the shirts and several other necessaries, such as stockings and pocket-handkerchiefs, were placed for my use on my father’s sea-chest, in my room, without any comment on her part, although she had paid for them out of her own purse. During the time that elapsed from my giving up the situation of “Poor Jack,” to my quitting Greenwich, I remained very quietly in my mother’s house, doing everything that I could for her, and employing myself chiefly in reading books, which I borrowed anywhere that I could. I was very anxious to get rid of my sobriquet of “Poor Jack,” and when so called would tell everybody that my name was now “Thomas Saunders.”
One Sunday, about three weeks after I had given up my berth, I was walking with my father and Virginia on the terrace of the hospital, when we perceived a large party of ladies and gentlemen coming towards us. My father was very proud of us: I had this very day put on the new suit of clothes which he had ordered for me, and which had been cut out in the true man-of-war fashion; and Virginia was, as usual, very nicely dressed. We were walking towards the party who were advancing, when all of a sudden my father started, and exclaimed:—
“Well, shiver my timbers! if it ain’t she—and he—by all that’s blue!”