His best clothes, presented by Miss Scragley, were stowed away for high days and holidays, and the suit his father bought him and brought him was simply neat and somewhat nautical.
Let us take a little cruise in the Merry Maiden. Shall we, reader?
It will be a cruise in imagination certainly, but very real for all that, because it is from the life.
It is very early, then, in the joyous month of June, and the Merry Maiden is lying alongside a green bank. There is no pier here. It is a country place. Yonder on the right is a pretty little canal-side inn, the “Jolly Tapsters.” You can read its name on the sign that is swinging to and fro beneath a wide-spreading elm-tree. Under this tree is a seat, and a table also; and on fine evenings, after their day’s work is done, honest labourers, dressed in smocks, who have been haymaking all day, come here to smoke long clays, to talk to their neighbours, and now and then beat the table with their pewters to ask for “another pint, landlord, if you please.”
Tandy lay in here last night and left a whole lot of parcels and things at that cosy hostelry; for the country all about is an agricultural one, beautifully wooded with rolling hills, with many a smiling mansion peeping grey or red above the trees, and many a well-tilled farm. The parcels will all be called for in due time.
The barge-master is up before even Ransey is stirring. He has lit the fire and made ready for breakfast. Before going on shore by the little gangway, he stirs Sammy up. Sammy, the sixteen-year-old boy, has been sleeping among the cargo with a morsel of tarpaulin for a blanket. He rubs his eyes, and in a few seconds pulls himself up, and begins, lazily enough, to sort and arrange the parcels and make notes for the next stop in a small black book, with a very thick pencil that he sticks in his mouth about once every three seconds to make it write more easily.
“What a lovely morning!” thinks Tandy, and Bob, who has come bounding after him, thinks so too. The sun is already up, however. From every copse and plantation comes the melody of birds. Flocks of rooks are flying heavily and silently away to the distant river, where among the reeds they will find plenty to eat. Swimming about in the canal yonder are half a score of beautiful ducks. No, not wild; wild birds seldom build on a busy canal side. They are the innkeeper’s Rouens, and that splendid drake is very proud indeed. He lifts himself high out of the water and claps his wings in defiance as Bob passes.
Yonder is a lark lilting loudly and sweetly high above the green corn. There are linnets and greenfinches in the hedges, and warblers among the snow-white blossoms of the may.
There is a wealth of wild flowers everywhere—blue-eyed speedwells, the yellow celandine, the crimson of clover, the ragged robin, and ox-eye daisies weeping dew.
So balmy is the air and fresh that the barge-master has wandered further than he had intended. Hunger warns him to beat a retreat. Canal people, like caravan folks, have excellent appetites.