“Lor’, it don’t matter a bit about me,” he replied, giving himself a good shake like a Newfoundland dog, and scattering the drops about, which pleased the children mightily, as he did it in such a funny way. “I rayther likes it nor not.”
“But you might catch cold,” suggested Mary kindly.
“Catch your grandmother!” he retorted. “Sailors ain’t mollycoddles.”
“Wat’s dat?” asked Teddy inquiringly, looking up at him.
“Why, sir,” said Jupp, scratching his head reflectively—he had left his cap under the elm-tree on top of the hill, where he had taken it off when he set about building the fire for the kettle—“a mollycoddle is a sort of chap as always wraps hisself up keerfully for fear the wind should blow upon him and hurt his complexion.”
“Oh!” said Teddy; but he did not seem any the wiser, and was about to ask another question which might have puzzled Jupp, when Liz interrupted the conversation, and changed the subject.
“There’s Conny coming now, and Pa with her,” she called out, pointing to the top of the glade, where her father and elder sister could be seen hurrying swiftly towards them, followed closely by Joe the gardener bearing a big bundle of blankets and other things which the vicar thought might be useful.
“My! Master must have been scared!” cried Mary, noticing in the distance the anxious father’s face. “Master Teddy do cause him trouble enough, he’s that fond of the boy!”
But, before Jupp could say anything in reply, the new arrivals had approached the scene of action, Conny springing forward first of all and hugging Teddy and Cissy and Liz all round. In the exuberance of her delight, too, at their being safe and sound, when in her nervous dread she had feared the worst, she extended the same greeting to Mary and Jupp; for, she was an affectionate little thing, and highly emotional in spite of her usually staid demeanour and retiring nature.
The vicar, too, could hardly contain himself for joy, and broke down utterly when he tried to thank Jupp for rescuing his little son; while Joe the gardener, not to be behindhand in this general expression of good-will and gratitude, squeezed his quondam rival’s fist in his, ejaculating over and over again, with a broad grin on his bucolic face, “You be’s a proper sort, you be, hey, Meaister?” thereby calling upon the vicar, as it were, to testify to the truth of the encomium.