“Why, Master Ranty! is this yourself?” cried Mrs. Gudge, clasping her fat hands and going off into a transport of delight, wonderful to behold. “Dearie me! how glad I am! how tall you are, and how brown, and handsomer than ever, I declare!”
Our old friend, Ranty, laughed, and dashed back his sun-browned locks off his happy, thoughtless face, as he answered:
“I believe you, Mrs. Gudge; so handsome, in fact, that they wanted to take away the Apollo Belvidere—a gentleman you are not acquainted with, Mrs. Gudge—and put me in his place. My modesty, of which I have at least the full of a tar-bucket, would not permit me to listen to such a proposal a moment. And now, my dear madam, how are all my friends at Heath Hill and Old Barrens?”
“First-rate!” replied Mrs. Gudge; “the judge was here, not ten minutes ago, with that big, rough fellow, with all the hair about his face; Black Bart they call him.”
“One of those notorious smugglers! whew! I hope my excellent father is not taking to contraband courses in his latter days. What, in the name of Amphitrite, could he want of Black Bart?”
“Well, he said he wanted information about the smugglers, and he sent my old man to look for Bart.”
“Humph! Set a fox to catch a fox! I wonder how he succeeded. Seen our Pet, lately?”
“No, not since one day she dressed herself in my Bobby’s clothes, and drove young Mr. Germaine and Miss Erminie over to the cottage,” said Mrs. Gudge, laughing.
“Dressed herself in Bob’s clothes! what the dickens did she do that for?”
“For fun, she said; none of us knew them that day except her, and she drove them over without their ever finding her out. Miss Pet always is doing something out of the way, you know, Master Ranty.”