“Never mind that, ma’am. I want to take you all down to see the wreck at high-water,” said he. “It will probably be the last of the old ship.”
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Bob, pitching his hat in the air, and catching it dexterously again. “Won’t that be jolly?”
On Nell now coming downstairs, they proceeded on their respective ways; the Captain into Portsmouth, and Mrs Gilmour, with Bob and Nellie, accompanied by Dick carrying a basket, to Mrs Craddock’s old-fashioned cottage, at Fratton—almost in the opposite direction.
Here Mrs Gilmour, after one or two inquiries, discovered, much to her satisfaction, that the widow and her daughter were the wife and child of her husband’s boatswain, whence ensued much talk between herself and the old lady, who declared the invalid to be “the very image of poor dear Craddock!”
While their elders were conversing, Nellie was also having a chat with the bedridden girl, who, she was glad to see, looked decidedly better than at the time of her last visit; an improvement doubtless due to the Captain’s old port; and other nourishing things Mrs Gilmour had taken her.
Bob meanwhile had been overhauling the various curios in the little parlour, where the invalid was lying, this being the first time he had been there.
“Oh, auntie,” he called out presently, “do look at this Chinese idol here! It’s just like one I saw at the South Kensington Museum, only it has such funny wooden shoes on.”
Mrs Gilmour came across the room to look at the monster figure squatting down in the corner; but, on Bob’s showing her the shoes, she laughed.
“Those are not Chinese, my boy,” she exclaimed, “they are a pair of wooden sabots from France, such as are worn by the peasants of Brittany and Normandy.”
“You’re quite right, my lady,” said the widow Craddock, approaching them. “My son, who was a sailor like his father, found them on board a French vessel he helped that was in distress in the Channel; so, he brought them home and stuck them on that there h’image in fun. Lawk, mum, if them wooden shoes could talk, it’s a queer tale they’d tell ye, fur they was the means, or leastways it wer’ through his boarding the vessel where he found ’em, that my son Jim, which was his name, my lady, come to give up the sea; although, mind you, he’s summat to do with it still, being a fisherman fur that matter. However, the end of it was that he marries the French gal as took his fancy when he comed across them shoes, and went to live at Saint Mailer, as they calls it.”