[CHAPTER XI.]
CAPTAIN PRODDER CARRIES BAD NEWS TO HISNIECE'S HOUSE.
While Aurora stood upon the threshold of the open window, a man was lingering upon the broad stone steps before the door of the entrance hall, remonstrating with one of John Mellish's servants, who held supercilious parley with the intruder, and kept him at arm's length with the contemptuous indifference of a well-bred servant.
This stranger was Captain Samuel Prodder, who had arrived at Doncaster late in the afternoon, had dined at the Reindeer, and had come over to Mellish Park in a gig driven by a hanger-on of that establishment. The gig and the hanger-on were both in waiting at the bottom of the steps; and if there had been anything wanting to turn the balance of the footman's contempt for Captain Prodder's blue coat, loose shirt-collar, and silver watch chain, the gig from the Reindeer would have done it.
"Yes, Mrs. Mellish is at home," the gentleman in plush replied, after surveying the sea-captain with a leisurely and critical air, which was rather provoking to poor Samuel; "but she's engaged."
"But perhaps she'll put off her engagements for a bit when she hears who it is as wants to see her," answered the captain, diving into his capacious pocket. "She'll tell a different story, I dare say, when you take her that bit of pasteboard."
He handed the man a card, or rather let me say a stiff square of thick pasteboard, inscribed with his name, so disguised by the flourishing caprices of the engraver as to be not very easily deciphered by unaccustomed eyes. The card bore Captain Prodder's address as well as his name, and informed his acquaintances that he was part-owner of the Nancy Jane, and that all consignments of goods were to be made to him at &c. &c.
The footman took the document between his thumb and finger, and examined it as minutely as if it had been some relic of the middle ages. A new light dawned upon him as he deciphered the information about the Nancy Jane, and he looked at the captain for the first time with some approach to human interest in his countenance.
"Is it cigars you want to dispose hof?" he asked, "or bandannas? If it's cigars, you might come round to our 'all, and show us the harticle."
"Cigars!" roared Samuel Prodder. "Do you take me for a smuggler, you——?" Here followed one of those hearty seafaring epithets with which polite Mr. Chucks was apt to finish his speeches. "I'm your missus's own uncle; leastways, I—I knew her mother when she was a little gal," he added, in considerable confusion; for he remembered how far away his sea-captainship thrust him from Mrs. Mellish and her well-born husband; "so just take her my card, and look sharp about it, will you?"