"Oh, well, Mrs. Tom, he'll outgrow that. The best thing you can do is to let me take him to sea with me the next time I go, and that will cure him of his laziness, if anything will. In the meantime, I have a patient for you to take care of, if you have no objection. He can't last much longer, poor fellow, and you are a better nurse than Sibyl. What do you say, Mrs. Tom? Shall I send him up to your house?"
Mrs. Tom was a brown faced, black-eyed, keen-looking, wide-awake, gossiping little woman, of four feet high, with a tongue that could, and did, say sharp things sometimes; but with a heart so warm and large that it is a wonder how it ever found room in so small a body. However, I have been told, as a general thing, little people are, by far, cleverer and warmer-hearted than their tall neighbors—as if nature were anxious to atone for their shortened stature by giving them a double allowance of heart and brains.
Nursing was Mrs. Tom's peculiar element. Nothing delighted her more than to get possession of a patient, whom she could doctor back to health. But unfortunately this desire of her heart was seldom gratified; for both Carl and Christie were so distressingly healthy that "yarb tea" and "chicken broth" were only thrown away upon them. Her frequent visits to the mainland, however, afforded her an opportunity of physicking indiscriminately certain unfortunate little wretches, who were always having influenza, and measles, and hooping-cough, and other little complaints too numerous to mention, and which fled before Mrs. Tom's approach and the power of her "yarb tea." Of late there had been a "plentiful scarcity" even of these escape-valves, so her eyes twinkled now with their delight at the prospect of this godsend.
"Send him up? Sartinly you will, Master Guy. I'll take care of him. This here's the best road up to the side of the rocks; 'tain't so rough as it is here."
"Lift him up," said Captain Campbell to the sailors who had rowed them ashore, "Gently, boys," he said, as the sick man groaned. "Don't hurt him. Follow Mrs. Tom to her cottage—that's the way. I'll be down early to-morrow to see him, Mrs. Tom. This way, Drummond; follow me. I'll bid you good-night, Mrs. Tom. Remember me to Christie."
And Captain Campbell sprang up the rocks, followed by Sibyl and Drummond, in the direction of Campbell's Castle.
Mrs. Tom, with a rapidity which the two sturdy seamen found it difficult to follow, burdened as they were, walked toward her cottage.
The home of Mrs. Tom was a low, one-story house, consisting of one large room and bed-room, with a loft above, where all sorts of lumber and garden implements were thrown, and where Master Carl sought his repose. A garden in front, and a well-graveled path, led up to the front door, and into the apartment which served as kitchen, parlor, dining-room, and sleeping-room for Christie and Mrs. Tom. The furniture was of the plainest description, and scanty at that, for Mrs. Tom was poor, in spite of all her industry; but, as might be expected from so thrifty a housewife, everything was like waxwork. The small, diamond-shaped panes in the windows flashed like jewels in the moonlight; and the floors and chairs were scrubbed as white as human hands could make them. Behind the house was a large vegetable garden, nominally cultivated by Carl, but really by Mrs. Tom, who preferred doing the work herself to watching her lazy nephew.
As the men entered with their burden, Mrs. Tom threw open the bed-room door, and the sick man was deposited on the bed. Lights were brought by Carl, a round-faced, yellow-haired, sleepy-looking youth, of fifteen, with dull, unmeaning blue eyes, and a slow, indolent gait; the very opposite in every way of his brisk, bustling little aunt.
"Be off with you to bed!" said Mrs. Tom. "It's the best place for any one so lazy as you are. Clear out, now, for I'm going to sit up with this here sick man, and want quiet."