“Yes, I’m Captain Dresser,” replied that individual, smiling all over his face, his queer little beady black eyes twinkling more than ever with excitement, and his bushy eyebrows moving up and down. “Yes, I’m Captain Dresser—Jack Dresser, as your uncle and all my old shipmates in the service used to call me, much at your service, ha, ha, ha!”
Bob and Nellie could not help joining in with the old gentleman’s laugh at his little joke, the Captain’s “Ha, ha, ha!” was so cheery and catching.
It was a regular jolly “Ha, ha, ha!”
The trio, thereupon, got very confidential together, Bob telling how they had got their dog Rover with them, only he was travelling in the guard’s van, being too big to be put in the box under the carriage, as he would have been if he’d been a little dog instead of a fine big black retriever, which he, Bob, was very glad to say he was, and “not a mere lady’s pet like a pug or a toy terrier,” while Nellie, in her turn, intimated her intention of making a collection of shells and seaweed when she got to the shore, which, she said, she longed to reach so as to ‘see the sea,’ that being the dearest wish of her heart.
The Captain, on his part, reciprocated these friendly advances in the heartiest way, expressing the strongest desire to make the acquaintance of Rover, as well as to take his fellow-travellers out in his yacht for a sail whenever the weather was fine enough; that is, if they promised to behave themselves properly, and always ‘did what they were told and obeyed orders,’ Captain Dresser saying, with an expressive wink that made him look more jackdaw-like than ever, that he invariably insisted, even in the presence of their “dear aunt Polly,” on being “captain of his own ship.”
They were in the midst of all these mutual confidences, the Captain chattering away like an old hen clucking round a pair of new-found chicks, and Bob and Nellie full of glee and exuberant anticipations of all the coming fun they were going to have afloat and ashore; when, suddenly, the light of the further window of the railway-carriage, opposite that near to which the trio were grouped in close confab, was obscured by a dark body pressing against it from without, as if some one was trying to gain admittance.
“Hallo!” cried the Captain. “What’s that—who’s there?”
But, before the old gentleman could rise from his seat, or
Bob and Nellie do anything save gape with astonishment, the window-sash was violently forced down; and, without a ‘by your leave’ or any word of warning, a strange uncouth figure, so it seemed to their startled gaze, came squeezing through the opening and fell on the floor of the carriage at their feet in a clumsy sprawl.