This question was uttered, not in a tone of misgiving, but in one of cheerful confidence. Ben looked enquiringly up into John’s face, and John realized, ruefully, that his small protégé was reposing complete trust in his willingness and ability to settle the future satisfactorily for him.
“Well, that’s a problem which seems to hang in the hedge a trifle,” he said. “We shall have to talk it over. But first I want a wash, and breakfast.”
“I got some bacon cut, and there’s eggs, and a bit of beef,” offered Ben, ignoring the first of the Captain’s needs as a frivolity.
“Excellent! Where’s the pump?”
“Out the back. But ”
“Well, you come and work it for me,” said John. “I want a towel, and some soap as well.”
Considerably surprised (for the Captain looked quite clean, he thought), Ben collected a piece of coarse soap, cut from a bar, and a huckaback towel, and followed his guest into the garden. But when he discovered that the Captain, not content with sousing his head and neck, proposed to wash the whole of his powerful torso, he was moved to utter a shocked protest. “You’ll catch your death!” he gasped.
The Captain, briskly rubbing the soap over his chest, and down his arms, laughed. “Not I!”
“But you don’t need to go a-washing of yourself all over!”
“What, after sleeping all night in my clothes? Don’t I just!” John glanced critically down at Ben, and added: “It wouldn’t do you any harm to go under the pump either.”