“And where do you live, my lad?”
“Me and Babs and Bob and Murrams all lives, when we’re to home, at Hangman’s Hall; and father lives there, too, when ’ee’s to home; and the Admiral, yonder, he roosts in the gibbet-tree.”
“And what does father do?”
“Oh, father’s a capting.”
“A captain, dear boy?”
“No, he’s not a boy, but a man, and capting of the Merry Maiden, a canal barge, mum. An’ we all goes to sea sometimes together, ’cepting Murrams, our pussy, and the Admiral. We have such fun; and I ride Jim the canal hoss, and Babs laughs nearly all the time.”
“So you’re very happy all of you, and always were?”
“Oh, yes—’cepting when father sometimes took too much rum; but that’s a hundred years ago, more or less, mum.”
“Poor lad! Have you a mother?”
“Oh, yes, we has a mother, but only she’s gone dead. The parson said she’d gone to heaven; but I don’t know, you know. Wish she’d come back, though,” he added with a sigh.