“Hill—ll—o!” he shouted. “Here we all are, Ransey Tansey, Babs, and Bob, and all. Why, this is a merry meeting. Come, Babs. Hoist away, Ransey. Hee—hoy—ip! and there she is safely landed in harbour. So you missed your old father, little lass, did you? Bless it. But we’re all going on to-morrow, and the Merry Maiden has got a new coat o’ paint, and new furniture for the cuddy, and it’s no end of a jolly time we’ll all have.”
Yes, it was a merry meeting, and a right happy one. I only wish that both Miss Scragley and Captain Weathereye had seen it.
“Why,” the former would have said to herself, “this good fellow could surely never have been a slave to the bottle!”
Mr Tandy had never really been a constant imbiber of that soul-killing curse of our country—drink; but some years gone by, like many another old sailor, he was liable to slide into an occasional “bout,” as it is called, and it was with sorrow he thought of this now. But Miss Scragley and many others have yet to learn that it is often the best-hearted and the brightest that fall most easily into temptation.
As for Weathereye, had he been a witness of this little reunion, he too would have given his opinion about the sturdy old sailor.
“Why!” he would have cried frankly to Mr Tandy, (pronounced Tansey only by the children) “why, my good fellow, Miss Scragley, who is faddy and elderly, and myself, old fool that I am at the best, were considering what best we could do for your children. We were to do all kinds of pretty things. The boy was going to a school, the child to a home, and you—ha, ha, ha—you, with your bold face and your sturdy frame, a man of barely forty, were going to be sent to the house. Ha, ha, no wonder I laugh. But tip us your flipper, Tandy, you’re a man every inch—a man and a sailor.”
That is what Weathereye would have said had he seen Tandy sitting there now.
They are right in saying that those whom animals and children love are possessed of right good hearts of their own.
And here was this old sailor—the word “old” being simply a term of endearment, for none but the sickly are old at forty, and they’ve been old all the time—sitting erect in his chair, Babs on one knee, the great cat on the other; Ransey on the hearth looking smilingly up at father’s bronzed face, silver-sprinkled hair and beard; the Admiral standing on one leg behind the chair; and poor Bob asleep before the fire, with his chin reposing on his old master’s boot.
It was a pretty picture.