“Speakin’ ’bout my b’y, wer’ yer?” said he, turning half round as he spoke, to pat Sailor Bill’s head kindly. “Poor feller! yer might ha’ sunthin’ a sight worse ter talk about, I reckon! He’s a chap as can’t do harm to none whatsomdever, if he can’t do ’em no good, as he once did to me, I guess.”
“You can’t forget that, Seth?” said Mr Rawlings.
“No, nor won’t as long as this chile draws breath nether,” answered the ex-mate of the Susan Jane, feelingly, with a look of almost parental fondness at the boy.
“Mr Wilton here was wondering, Seth,” continued Mr Rawlings, “why you would not let me open that package round poor Sailor Bill’s neck, to see whether it would give us any clue to who he is.”
The smile faded instantly from Seth Allport’s face, which reassumed its normal grim, firm look, just as if some one had dealt him what he would have called a “back-hander.”
“Mr Wilton may wonder, and you too, Mr Rawlings, but I jest won’t that, siree, not if I know it. Nary a soul shall look upon it, I guess, till that thar b’y opens it hisself. I said that months agone, Rawlings, as you knows well, and I say it now agin.”
“I wish I could recollect whom he resembles, really,” said Ernest Wilton, to give a turn to the conversation, which had got into such an unpleasant hitch. “There is nothing so worrying as to try and puzzle over a face which you seem to remember and which you cannot place.”
“Yes,” said Mr Rawlings; “like a name sometimes seems to hover right on the tip of your tongue, and yet you can’t get it out, try what you may. I suppose you left England only lately?”
“I?” replied the young engineer. “Why, it’s nearly four years since I left Liverpool for America—quite.”
“Perhaps you keep up communication, however, with the tight little island, eh?” said Mr Rawlings. “I daresay some one was sorry to lose you.”