Joe the gardener, who had also come back to the house shortly after the others, with the report that he “couldn’t see nothing of Master Teddy nowheres,” sat in the chimney-corner, gazing at the porter with envious admiration as he told of his hairbreadth scapes at sea and ashore when serving in the navy. Joe wished that he had been a sailor too, as then perhaps, he thought, the nurse, for whom he had a sneaking sort of regard, might learn to smile and look upon him in the same admiring way, in which, as he could see with half an eye, she regarded the stalwart black-bearded Jupp.
Bye and bye, however, a tinkle of the parlour bell summoning the household to prayers brought the pleasant evening to a close, too soon so far as Jupp was concerned, although Joe the gardener did not regard the interruption with much regret; and while Mary took off the children to bed on the termination of the vicar’s heart-felt thanks to the Father above for the preservation of his little son, Mr Vernon wished him good-night, trying to press at the same time a little money present into his hand for his kind care of Teddy.
But this Jupp would not take, declining the douceur with so much natural dignity that the vicar honoured him the more for refusing a reward, for only doing his duty as he said.
Mr Vernon apologised to him for having hurt his feelings by offering it, adding, much to Jupp’s delight, that he would always be pleased to see him at the vicarage when he had an hour or so to spare if he liked to come; and, on the porter’s telling him in return that he was only free as a rule on Sundays, as then only one train passed through the station early in the morning, between which and the mail express late at night he had nothing to do, and being a stranger in the place and without any relations the time somewhat hung on his hands, Mr Vernon asked him to come up to the house after church and have dinner with the servants, saying that he could go to the evening service in company with the family.
This invitation Jupp gladly accepted in the same spirit in which it was given; and then, with another hearty “good-night” from the vicar, to which he responded by touching his cap and giving a salute in regular blue-jacket fashion, he went on his way back to the little railway-station beyond the village where Master Teddy had first made his acquaintance—much to their mutual benefit as things now looked!
Chapter Four.
In a Scrape again.
The winter was a long and severe one, covering the range of downs that encircle Endleigh with a fleecy mantle of white which utterly eclipsed the colour of the woolly coats of the sheep for which they were famous, and heaping the valleys with huge drifts that defied locomotion; so that Master Teddy, being unable to get out of doors much, was prevented from wandering away from home again, had he been in that way inclined.