“Beg your honour’s pardon; I didn’t laugh.”
“You did laugh, sir,” roared the Captain—“that is, I saw you look at Master Nic here and smile. It’s outrageous. Every one is turning against me, and I’m beginning to think it’s time I was out of this miserable world.”
He snatched up his stick from the stand, banged on the old straw hat he wore, and stamped out of the porch to turn away to the left, leaving Nic hesitating as to what he should do, deeply grieved as he was at his father’s annoyance and display of temper. One moment he was for following and trying to say something which would tend to calm the irritation. The next he was thinking it would be best to leave the old man to himself, trusting to the walk in the pleasant grounds having the desired result.
But this idea was knocked over directly by Solly, who had followed his master to the porch, and stood watching him for a few moments.
“Oh dear, dear! Master Nic,” he cried, turning back, “he’s gone down the combe path to see whether there’s any more water running down; and there aren’t, and he’ll be a-wherriting his werry inside out, and that wherrits mine too. For I can’t abear to see the poor old skipper like this here.”
“No, Solly, neither can I,” said Nic gloomily.
“It’s his old hurts does it, sir. It aren’t nat’ral. Here he is laid up, as you may say, in clover, in as nice a place as an old sailor could end his days in.”
“Yes, Solly,” said Nic sadly; “it is a beautiful old place.”
“Ay, it is, sir; and when I cons it over I feel it. Why, Master Nic, when I think of all the real trouble as there is in life, and what some folks has to go through, I asks myself what I’ve ever done to have such good luck as to be safely moored here in such a harbour. It’s a lovely home, and the troubles is nothing—on’y a bit of a gale blowed by the skipper now and then along of the wrong boots as hurts his corns, or him being a-carrying on too much sail, and bustin’ off a button in a hurry. And who minds that?”
“Ah! who minds a trifle like that, Solly?” sighed Nic. “Well, sir, you see he does. Wind gets up directly, and he talks to me as if I’d mutinied. But I don’t mind. I know all the time that he’s the best and bravest skipper as ever lived, and I’d do anything for him to save him from trouble.”