“If you knew my real father and mother, sir, won’t you please tell me something of them?”
“Of course I will, sir; but it will make a long story to tell, even the little I knew of them. So we’d better seat ourselves comfortable-like; and with my wife here to help me where my memory fails, I think perhaps I may come at the telling of it understandingly.”
Thus saying, the worthy man began, and in spite of many interruptions from his wife and the questions asked by both Breeze and Wolfe, he finally succeeded in relating the following tale:
"As you already know, sir, before we were married both my wife and I lived in the family of Sir Wolfe Tresmont, of Tresmont in Lincolnshire, England, she as lady’s-maid and I as butler. When I first took service there Mr. Tristram was a fine young gentleman of about your own age, although the missis, having been brought up in the family, had known him from his boyhood.
"After I had been in the family for five years, one of which we had been married, Mr. Tristram got through with his college, and was sent off on his travels around the world. His mother died while he was gone, but his father heard from him regular.
"At last there came a long letter, telling as how Mr. Tristram had got married to an American young lady, who was the daughter of a ship captain. She went with her father to the East Indies, and somewhere out there Mr. Tristram met them, and engaged passage to New York on the same ship. They fell in love with each other on the voyage, and were married as soon as the ship reached port. Then he wrote to his father what he had done, and asked if he might bring his wife home.
"Sir Wolfe was very angry at all this, for he had no love for the Yankees, begging your pardon, sir, and he could not bear the thought of his only son marrying one of them. What he wrote to Mr. Tristram I never knew, but at any rate they did not come home for nearly two years, when they brought their baby, which must have been you, sir, with them. Mrs. Tristram, as we called her, was one of the sweetest young ladies as ever I laid eyes on; but Sir Wolfe would not see her, and they stayed with Mr. Tristram’s elder sister, who was my Lady Seabright.
"While they were there, I met the nurse one day wheeling the baby in his little carriage, and when I stopped to look at him I took notice of this very identical gold ball hanging around his neck. The nurse said it was one of them puzzle-balls that Miss Merab--that was your mother, sir--had got in the East Indies, and had had fixed up as a present for Mr. Tristram. It was he himself fastened it to a gold chain and hung it around the baby’s neck. I never saw the inside of it, but my wife there did many a time, for she was stopping with my Lady Seabright, in place of her own maid, who was sick all the time Mr. Tristram and his wife were there.
"Finally they decided to go back to America, and as the doctor said a long sea voyage would be the very best thing for Mrs. Tristram’s health, they took passage on a sailing-ship, of which I mind the name well, it being such a queer one. It was Señora, and from the day she left Liverpool docks to this never a word has come from her, good or bad.
"Soon after that I left Sir Wolfe’s service, and he helped me start the little business that I’ve followed ever since here in Queenstown, with fairly good success, thanks to the Americans. I never saw him again; but I heard he was never the same man after the ship his son had sailed in was given up for lost. He died about six months ago, rest his soul, and at that time the newspapers all over the world, but particular in America, had advertisements in them asking for any information of Mr. Tristram, or his wife, or their son, who would, if he was alive, be heir to Tresmont. I saw some of the advertisements myself, and heard of others from my American customers; but I never knew of any answer coming to them, and I don’t suppose there ever was one.