You would never guess.
Well, a nice little loaf of bread and an ounce packet of the best black tea, both packed up in a very pretty box that also contained a remarkably smart cap, with ribbons of a colour such as the soul of Sarah loved.
Nor was this all,
On the lid of the box was an elaborate device in hieroglyphic characters, which could be readily understood when properly explained by the young designers, detailing the leading incidents of a celebrated picnic in the woods which once occurred; although, possibly the uninitiated might experience some little difficulty at first in discriminating between what were meant for the figures of the principal personages of the story and the objects of still life depicted in the drawing, though otherwise it was an admirable work of art.
Regarding the copy of verses also pinned on to the box, which the device in question was intended to illustrate, there could be no mistake; the verses, indeed, being a replica of an original poem, preserved in the Bobo-Nellonian archives and entitled, “Sarah’s forget-me-nots,” wherewith the reader has been already made acquainted.
The parcel was duly dispatched down to Southsea; but, though Nellie subsequently wrote a nice little letter to the Captain in her own nice handwriting, large and legible, such as the old sailor could read comfortably without spectacles, wherein she mentioned all the latest news of her aquarium tenants, telling how the hermit crab had distrained for his rent on a young lobster who had cast-off his shell, and that a small skate objected to the ice, she could learn nothing of how “the good Sarah” received her present.
Nor could Bob gain any information on the subject from aunt Polly, to whom he sent a long epistle bearing on the same momentous theme.
Both had to wait to have their curiosity satisfied until their aunt Polly and Captain Dresser came up to London at Christmastide; when at length the two of them managed to worm the secret out of the Captain.
The old sailor had been giving them all the news about those they had known down at Southsea; how Dick had at last been accepted for the navy and entered as a second-class boy on board the Saint Vincent, being bound to make a full able-bodied sailor in time; and how Hellyer had got a little pension in addition to his pay, as he was now “chief officer” of the coastguard; after which, the Captain at last referred to Sarah, “the good Sarah!”
“By Jove!” said he, “I shall never forget that night your box came! I was playing cribbage with your aunt Polly—and she cheated me, too, by the same token, in the fuss that occurred on opening the parcel, by scoring ‘two for his heels,’ when it only should have been ‘one for his nob.’ You never saw such a disgraceful thing done in your life, really a most barefaced piece of cheating!”