“It is Saturday today, sir. I think I will postpone setting to until Monday week. My cousin and the lady in whose charge she is came up with me on Thursday, and will be leaving town the end of next week, and I should wish to escort them about while here. I will come on Monday morning ready for work. How had I better be dressed?”
“I should say as a countryman. A convenient character for you to begin with will be that of a man who, having got into a poaching fray, and hurt a gamekeeper, has made for London as the best hiding place. You are quite uncertain about your future movements, but you are thinking of enlisting.”
“Very well, sir, I will get the constable at Reigate, who knows me well, to send me a suit. I might find it difficult to get all the things I want here.”
Accordingly, for the next week Mark devoted himself to the ladies. Millicent, in her interest in the work that he was about to undertake, had now quite got over her fit of ill temper, and the old cordial relations were renewed. On the Friday he saw them into the Weymouth coach, then sauntered off to his friend Chetwynd's lodgings.
Ramoo had already sailed. On his arrival in town he had said that he should, if possible, arrange to go out as a steward.
“Many men of my color who have come over here with their masters go back in that way,” he said, in answer to Mark's remonstrances. “It is much more comfortable that way than as a passenger. If you go third class, rough fellows laugh and mock; if you go second class, men look as much as to say, 'What is that colored fellow doing here? This is no place for him.' Much better go as steward; not very hard work; very comfortable; plenty to eat; no one laugh or make fun.”
“Well, perhaps it would be best, when one comes to think of it, Ramoo; but I would gladly pay your passage in any class you like.”
“Ramoo go his own way, sahib,” he said. “No pay passage money; me go to docks where boats are sailing, go on board and see head steward. Head steward glad enough to take good servant who is willing to work his way out, and ask for no wages. Head steward draw wages for him, and put wages in his own pocket. He very well satisfied.”
On Wednesday he came and told Mark that he had arranged to sail in the Nabob, and was to go on board early the next morning. He seemed a great deal affected, and Mark and Millicent were equally sorry to part with the faithful fellow.
“Well, old man,” Dick Chetwynd said, when Mark entered the room, where he was still at breakfast, “I was beginning to wonder whether you had gone to Reigate. Why, when I saw you last Friday you told me that you would look me up in a day or two.”