Jane Pengelly said this timidly, wiping her eyes carefully, with each corner of her apron in turn; for, she well knew her brother’s horror of the railway, and all conveyances—indeed, he disliked any mode of land travelling, save on foot, or “on Shank’s mare,” as he called it, which was the plan he invariably adopted for reaching such places which he could not get to by water.
“Why, Jane, my woman,” Sam indignantly rejoined; “your brains must all be a wool-gathering! Catch me and the lad agoing by that longshore schreechin’, smokin’, ramshacklin’ fire engine, when we can ha’ a boat’s sound plank under our foot, and sail over the sea in a nat’ral sort o’ way, such as we’re born to! You’re the last person to think as how Sam Pengelly ’d desart his colours and bringing-up, for to go over to such an outlandish way o’ fetching the port for which he’s bound! No, Jane—I ain’t angry, but I feels hurt a bit on the h’insinivation—but there, let it be. We’ll go round to Cardiff in the schooner, as is as smart a little craft for a passage boat as ere a one could wish to clap eyes on, though I says it as shouldn’t, and we’ll start, laddie, this arternoon, as soon as the tide sets down Channel; so, you’d better see after your traps, and stow your chest when dinner’s over—and then, we’ll get under weigh, and clear outwards!”
Little dinner, however, was eaten that day at the cottage, notwithstanding the fact that Jane Pengelly, as a reward for my industry in making up and remoulding her asparagus bed, had concocted a favourite Cornish dish for our repast, y’clept a “Mevagissey pie” - a savoury compound consisting of alternate slices of mutton and layers of apples and onions cut into pieces, and symmetrically arranged, the whole being subsequently covered with a crust, pie-fashion, and then baked in the oven until well browned; when, although the admixture seems somewhat queer to those unused to a Cornish cuisine, the result is not by any means to be despised; rather is it uncommonly jolly!
Generally, this dish would have been considered a tour de force on the table, and not much left of it after our united knife and fork play when operations had once begun; but now, albeit Sam Pengelly made a feeble pretence of having a tremendous appetite, failing most ridiculously in the attempt, while his sister heaped up my plate, we were all too much perturbed in our minds to do justice to the banquet. So it was that the Mevagissey pie, toothsome as it was, went almost untasted away, Jane removing the remains presently to the larder—that was, as she said, but I could not help noticing that she did not return afterwards to clear away the dinner things and make matters tidy in the kitchen, as was her regular custom when we had finished meals.
I soon found out the reason of this, when, on going up shortly afterwards to my little room, I discovered the soft-hearted creature bending over the sea-chest which I had been presented with—in addition to her son Teddy’s clothes and other property—“having a good cry,” as she said in excuse for the weakness.
From some cause or other, she had taken to me from the moment her brother Sam first brought me to the cottage, placing me in the vacant spot in her heart left by Teddy’s early death, and I am sure my own mother, if she had lived, could not have loved me more.
Of course I reciprocated her affection—how could I help it, when she and her brother were the only beings in the world who had ever exhibited any tenderness towards me?
Strangely enough, however, she would never allow me to call her “mother” or “Mistress Pengelly,” as I wanted to—thinking “Jane” too familiar, especially when applied by a youngster like myself to a middle-aged woman.
No, she would not hear of my addressing her otherwise than by her Christian name.
“If you calls me Missis anything, dearie, mind if I don’t speak to you always as ‘Master Leigh’—that distant as how you won’t know me,” she said; so, as she always said what she meant, I did as she wished, and she continued to style me her “dearie,” that being the affectionate pet name she had for me, in the same way as her brother Sam had dubbed me his “cockbird,” when he first introduced himself to me on the Hoe, a mode of address which he still persisted in.