“I want to get down,” asserted the urchin, vigorously struggling. “I want to get down and make a pudden for my dada.”
The man grimaced, and instantly set the child upon his legs.
“Perhaps we’ve made a mistake after all,” he said; “perhaps you are some other chap’s Billy. Where does your dada live, young ’un?—tell us that.”
Billy had by this time squatted on the ground again, and was once more chopping at his dock leaf. He did not answer until the man had twice repeated his question, then he explained.
“My dada’s tummin’ home. He’s tummin’ in a ship—and a puff-puff,” he added, as an after-thought.
“Right you are,” cried the brown-faced man again, and he caught him up in his arms once more and kissed him. “I thought I’d know my little woman’s nose among a thousand, and yours is so like it as one pea is like another. Come, let’s go and look for mammy.”
Billy was at first disposed to protest, but something at once merry and tender in the man’s blue eyes disarmed suspicion; and when he presently found himself hoisted on a broad shoulder, and was thus carried at galloping speed down the lane and through the village; when, moreover, this self-constituted steed actually vaulted the garden gate, and covered the tiny path that intervened between it and the cottage door with two strides, he was not only reassured but jubilant.
They could see “mammy” bending over the wash-tub through the open kitchen door, very red in the face, very wet and draggled as to dress, and with one end of her hair straggling down; and the queer thing was that at sight of her the man suddenly came to a standstill and uttered a kind of choking cry. And then mammy turned round and dropped the shirt she had been wringing out, and fairly screamed as she came rushing across the kitchen. Then laughing and crying together she flung her arms round the brown man’s neck, heedless of the danger to which she was exposing herself from the broken jam-pot and the rusty knife which Billy was still brandishing; and kissed him, and rocked backwards and forwards with him, and seemed altogether to have taken leave of her senses.
After a moment’s breathless pause of astonishment, Billy thought it time to assert himself. He dropped his two treasures on the floor and burst into a loud wail. Then clutching hold of the newcomer’s close-cropped fair head, he endeavoured with all his might to pull it away from the curly one that was pressed so close to it. And then mammy looked up, and her eyes were all wet, but her mouth was laughing.
“You mustn’t do that, sonny,” she said. “This is dada! Dada’s come home.”