As a boat was leaving the ship early in the afternoon, we went in her; when, being landed at Point, we soon found our way to Bonfire Corner, I, of course, acting as the navigator.
Dear me, no one ever saw such a homecoming in their life before as that of mine that day!
Jenny, who was dusting a mat at the door, rushed frantically into my arms, mat and all, my little sister hugging me as if we had really been parted for years, instead of only for the short spell of time that had elapsed since our separation; and my mother, who was not so demonstrative, was quite as glad, I know, to see me; while as for father, who was having a spell-off in the backyard with his pipe, he beamed all over at the sight of me in my uniform.
“Lor’, Tom!” he ejaculated, on my taking him unawares, with his head leaning back and the long churchwarden he was smoking dropping out of his mouth, for he had just started, with his eyes closed, for a ‘lay off the land,’ as he styled taking a snooze. “Ye’re the very h’image of what I wer’ when I wer’ your age—though not quite so good-looking I’m a-thinking!”
He said this in joke, for he and I were in the habit when in the wherry together of carrying on in that way and chaffing each other; but mother, who had followed me up, with Jenny behind her and Mick Donovan keeping close company in her wake, took poor father up with a round turn!
“What do you know what you were like at his age?” she cried. “Judging by your present figurehead, you couldn’t have been much to boast of!”
“Couldn’t I?” rejoined father. “I tell you what, Sarah, there wer’ a lot more gals ’sides you as wos a-runnin’ arter me when I was a youngster and first jined the sarvice!” Hearing my mother’s name mentioned, old ‘Ally Sloper’ at once struck up a screech, hopping through from the shop to join us.
“Say-rah, Say-rah!” he screamed, ruffling up the lemon crest on the top of his head, and spreading out the feathers round his neck that made him look as if he wore high collars. “I’ll wring your neck!”
I thought Mick Donovan would have died of laughing on hearing the cockatoo speak so funnily, his mirth being so contagious that we all followed suit; and, what with the screeching and screaming of the other birds, which seemed to take ‘Ally Sloper’s’ cry for a signal and chimed in, you never heard such a row in your life.
“Bedad, Oi’m kilt entoirely!” exclaimed Mick, when he had well-nigh laughed himself black in the face. “Oi nivver heerd such a baste in me loife fur talkin’, to bay sure!”