“That's a mill, my friend, and the jig-a-merree is the very wheel on which you have heard me say my father was crushed.”
Marble looked sorrowfully at the wheel, squeezed my hand, as if to express sorrow for having reminded me of so painful an event, and then I heard him murmuring to himself—“Well, I never had a father to lose. No bloody mill could do me that injury.”
“That gentleman on the quarter-deck,” I remarked, “is a physician for whom I sent to town, I suppose.”
“Ay, ay—he's some such matter, I do suppose; though I've been generalizing so much about this here river, and the manner of sailing a craft of that rig, I've had little to say to him. I'm always a better friend to the cook than to the surgeon. But, Miles, my lad, there's a rare 'un, in the ship's after-cabin, I can tell you!”
“That must be Lucy!”—and I did not stop to pay my compliments to the strange gentleman, but almost leaped into the vessel's cabin.
There was Lucy, sure enough, attended by a respectable-looking elderly black female, one of the half-dozen slaves that had become her's by the death of Mrs. Bradfort. Neither spoke, but we shook hands with frankness; and I understood by the anxious expression of my companion's eye, all she wished to know.
“I really think she seems better, and certainly she is far more cheerful, within his last day or two,” I answered to the appeal. “Yesterday she was twice at church, and this morning, for a novelty, she breakfasted with me.”
“God be praised!” Lucy exclaimed, with fervour. Then she sat down and relieved her feelings in tears. I told her to expect me again, in a few minutes, and joined the physician, who, by this time, was apprised of my presence. The calm, considerate manner of Post, gave me a confidence I had not felt for some days; and I really began to hope it might still be within the power of his art to save the sister I so dearly loved.
Our dispositions for quitting the sloop were soon made, and we ascended the hill together, Lucy leaning on my arm. On its summit was the chaise, into which the Doctor and Marble were persuaded to enter, Lucy preferring to walk. The negress was to proceed in the vehicle that had been sent for the luggage, and Lucy and I set out, arm and arm, to walk rather more than a mile in company, and that too without the presence of a third person. Such an occurrence, under any other circumstances than those in which we were both placed, would have made me one of the happiest men on earth; but, in the actual situation in which I found myself, it rendered me silent and uncomfortable. Not so with Lucy; ever natural, and keeping truth incessantly before her eyes, the dear girl took my arm without the least embarrassment, and showed no sign of impatience, or of doubt. She was sad, but full of a gentle confidence in her own sincerity and motives.
“This is dear Clawbonny, again!” she exclaimed, after we had walked in silence a short distance. “How beautiful are the fields, how fresh the woods, how sweet the flowers! Oh! Miles, a day in such a spot as this, is worth a year in town!”