During these years no tidings came to us of Joe Punchard. His poor mother, who earned a living by washing for some of our Shrewsbury folk, feared the worst from his long silence. But Mistress Nelly Hind, who kept a coffee shop in Raven Street, called Mistress Punchard a croaker and bade her be of good cheer, for she had neither seen nor directly heard from her brother John Benbow for twenty years; yet he was alive and well, and captain of a king's ship, if rumor were not a false, lying jade.
"Not that your Joe will ever rise to such a height," she added.
"Sure he's a better boy than ever your John was," said Mistress Punchard, up in arms for her offspring.
"John's legs are as straight as the bed post," retorted his sister, and then the two women began a war of words, in the midst of which, having drunk my dish of coffee, I slipped away.
I rarely speculated on my future, and my father never spoke of it. We took it for granted that I should succeed him in his little property, and during the school holidays I sometimes accompanied him to market, and learned to handle samples of grain and to discuss the points of his fat cattle.
It was when I was approaching the end of my seventeenth year that I began to think of the future more nearly. My father had suffered long--though Mistress Pennyquick and I had known nothing of it, he being so reticent--from a disease which nowadays physicians call angina pectoris, a disease that grips a man by the chest, as 'twere his breastbones are ground together, with breathlessness and exquisite pain. As he grew older, the attacks recurred more frequently and with greater violence, and after one of them, the first I had seen with my own eyes, he sent for Mr. Vetch, the attorney, and was closeted with him a great while in his room. Mistress Pennyquick's face was very grave when she spoke to me about it afterwards.
"'Tis a bad sign when a man sends for his lawyer, Humphrey," she said. "I can't abide 'un, for they always make me think of my latter end. Your father have made his will, I'll be bound, and I wish he spoke more free of things. But there, 'tis always the way; empty barrels make the most noise, as the saying is, and I will groan with the toothache while the poor master will suffer his agonies without a word."
One night as we were sitting reading, my father had an attack which terrified us. All at once, without a moment's warning, he dropped his book, and stood up, bending forward, his face blue, his eyes almost starting from his head. We hastened to him, but he motioned us away, and then Mistress Pennyquick bade me ride for Mr. Pinhorn. I snatched my cap, and, knowing that with my long legs I could reach the town by the fields more quickly than on horseback by the road, I did not stay to saddle Jerry, but set off at full speed across five-acre, vaulted the gate into the spinney, and so on till I gained the bridge, by which time I was blowing like a furnace.
It was dark, being October, and though I knew every yard of our ground, I marvel now to think how I escaped breaking my leg in a ditch or coming to some other mishap. I raced on to Raven Street, where Mr. Pinhorn lived, and by good luck found him just alighting at the door from his nag. I told him my errand in gasps; the good surgeon understood without much telling, and he leaped again into the saddle (his foot never having left the stirrup) and galloped away.
My knees shook so violently with the exertions I had made that I would fain have rested awhile before returning. But the thought that my father might die in my absence struck me with a chill, and I set off at a swinging stride after the surgeon.