He went home at once and told his father everything; but the vicar, though comforting him by saying that he would get the doctor a new gig, and recompense the farmer to whom the wagon belonged for the loss of his team, seemed to have his eyes awakened at last to the evil to which Doctor Jolly had so vainly tried to direct his attention.
He determined that Teddy should go to school.
But, before this intention could be carried out, there was a most unexpected arrival at the vicarage.
This was no less a personage than Uncle Jack, whom neither Teddy nor his sisters had ever seen before, he having gone to sea the same year the vicar had married, and never been heard of again, the vessel in which he had sailed having gone down, and all hands reported lost.
Uncle Jack hadn’t foundered, though, if his ship had, for here he was as large as life, and that was very large, he weighing some fourteen or fifteen stone at the least!
What was more, he had passed through the most wonderful adventures and been amongst savages. These experiences enabled him to recount the most delightful and hairbreadth yarns—yarns that knocked all poor Jupp’s stories of the cut-and-dried cruises he had had in the navy into a cocked hat, Teddy thought, as he hung on every utterance of this newly-found uncle, longing the while to be a sailor and go through similar experiences.
Uncle Jack took to him amazingly, too, and when he had become domesticated at the vicarage, asked one day what he was going to be.
“What, make a parson of him, brother-in-law!” exclaimed the sailor in horrified accents. “You’d never spoil such a boy as that, who’s cut out for a sailor, every inch of him—not, of course, that I wish to say a word against your profession. Still, he can’t go into the church yet; what are you going to do with him in the meantime, eh?”
“Send him to school,” replied the other.
“Why, hasn’t he been yet?”