“Just that!” answered Jack. “Will ye have the tooth?”
“Indeed I will!” said Boy gratefully, taking the mystic talisman out of Jack’s horny palm—“you’re awfully good to me! I’m ever so much obliged! And if I have to go to France, I will come and see you directly I get back.”
Rattling Jack shouldered his basket again slowly, and with difficulty.
“No, ye won’t!” he said dismally. “No, ye won’t think no more o’ me among they Frenchies. God bless my ’eart! An’ not yet ten ye ain’t! Wal, good-bye to ye! I’ll not be seein’ ye agin in this mortal world,—so I’ll just think o’ ye kindly, as a little chap wot’s dead!”
Boy’s heart sank, and his young blood seemed to grow cold.
“Oh, don’t do that, Jack!” he cried; “don’t do that!”
“I must,” said Jack with dreary gravity, looking a melancholy figure enough as he stood on the wet sand, with the gray storm-clouds scudding overhead, and the wind tossing his scanty white locks of hair. “For when a child is a child he’s one thing—and when he ain’t, he’s another. First there’s a baby—then there ain’t no baby, but a child,—and the baby’s gone. Then by-and-by there ain’t no child, but a boy—and the child’s gone. Then, afore ye can so much as look round, the boy’s gone, and there’s a man. Argyfyin’ my way, ye see baby, child, boy is all gone, which is to say, dead—for what’s bein’ dead but gone, and what’s bein’ gone but dead? And only the man is left, which is generally a poor piece of work. There’s wise folk writin’ in the newspapers wot calls it ever-lotion, but wot it is the lotion’s good for, God only knows. Anyhow I’ve seen a darned sight many more decent chillun than I have men. Which it proves that the chillun is dead. But my talk is too deep for ye—I kin see that! Ye poor little skinny white-faced chap,—ye can’t be expected to understan’ Feel Osophy.”
“No,” said Boy humbly, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. But I hope you’ll think of me just as if I were here,—you see you have given me the tiger’s tooth—and I shall never forget you!”
“M’appen the tooth will do somethin’ in the way of nippin’ the memory,” said Jack thoughtfully,—“mebbe so! Good-bye t’yer! There’s a cloud just a-goin’ to burst in the sky, and ye’ll be drenched to the skin afore ye knows where ye are!” and he turned up his quaint old physiognomy to the darkening heavens, from which already big drops of rain were beginning to fall. “Run ’ome, little ’un! Run ’ome! That mother o’ yourn ’ll be down on ye if ye wets yer clothes. Shake ’ands?” For Boy had timidly extended his small hand. “Sartinly!” And the old man grasped the tiny child fingers within his own rough dirty ones. “For it’s a long good-bye! Sartin sure of that I am! Don’t let ’em make a frog of ye out there in France, if ye can ’elp it. Good-bye! I’ll just think o’ ye as if ye were dead!”
The rain now began to fall in heavy earnest, and Boy could not stop to protest further against this obstinate final statement of his seafaring friend. He put the tiger’s tooth in his pocket, smiled, lifted his cap, and ran, a little light figure flying across the sand, some of his curls escaping loose and gleaming like the sunshine that was now lacking in the sky. Rattling Jack stood still and watched him go, heedless of the rain that began to drift in sweeping gusts round and round him. The sea uprose and lashed the flat shore with fringes of yellow foam, angrily murmuring and snarling like some savage beast of prey. But Jack heard nothing, or if he heard, he did not heed. Equally he saw nothing, but that small child figure racing through the rain over the glistening sand, till at the corner of an old jetty where the mists of the land and sea hung low like a curtain, it turned and disappeared.