“It was very wrong, Evan,” his mother said, “you might have got yourself drownded, and what should we have said then? Why, Lor, you might have gone under the ice, and we should never have known nothing about what had become of you, till they brought your tray of lollipops home. That would be all we should have had left of you. What should we have done?”
Mrs. Holl began to weep aloud at the picture she had raised; the younger children immediately followed her example, and required so much pacifying that it was some time before quiet was restored.
“Lor bless you, mother,” Evan said, “there is no call to take on about it. I was not going to get drowned close to the shore; besides, there was a gentleman, who got ready to come in for me, if I had sung out for help; and he would have done it too. I could see he meant it.”
“It were a risky job,” John Holl said; “a plaguy risky job. I ain’t going for to say as you are altogether wrong, Evan, but it were certainly risky.”
“You were quite right, Evan,” a voice said warmly, “quite right, and I would give a good deal, if I had it, to have been in your place, and to have done something one could look back with pleasure upon, if only for once in my life.”
The speaker was a lad of about seventeen, who has not yet been described, and yet he was of all these the person who would have first fixed the attention of any incomer.
He sat on the opposite side of the fire to John Holl, in a sort of box with high wheels to it; by turning these he moved himself about the room. He had a very intelligent face, thoughtful but not sad. His shoulders and the upper part of his body were straight and well developed, and his arms strong and nervous; down to his waist he was a fine well-formed figure, but below he was a helpless cripple. He had been injured as a child, his legs had lost all power, and had become perfectly drawn up and useless. He was a sad spectacle, and yet he was not unhappy, and by the little attentions which the children showed him it was easy to see how great a favourite he was with them. Evan now produced a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, in which he had put his money, and unfolded it and exhibited the store.
It was emptied on to the table, among the shouts of the children, who evidently considered that their brother had become the possessor of boundless riches, and indulged in all sorts of surmises as to what would be done with all this wealth, while Evan counted up the amount. There were twenty-five shillings in silver and copper, and the sovereign Frank Maynard had put in—two pounds five in all.
Having counted it, Evan again took it up and brought it to his father, but John Holl put it aside. “No, lad, the money is thine, you have fairly earned it, and it is yours to do as you like with. Don’t fool it away, and think well over everything before you spend it. You are getting too old for your tray now; with that you might buy a good barrow, and do a great deal better; but there’s time enough for that. Give it to mother; she will take care of it for you, and you have but to go to her when you want it.”
And so it was arranged; and then Mrs. Holl took the young ones off to bed, whither the elders followed them very soon after.