“Oh! Captain; don’t say that. ’Tan’t as I care ’bout the boat’s hire, or the big pay you’ve been givin’ me. Believe me it ain’t. Ye can have me an’ the Mary ’ithout a sixpence o’ expense—long’s ye like. But to think I’m niver to row you again, that ’ud vex me dreadful—maybe more’n ye gi’e me credit for, Captain.”
“More than I give you credit for! It couldn’t, Jack. We’ve been too long together for me to suppose you actuated by mercenary motives. Though I may never need your boat again, or see yourself, don’t have any fear of my forgetting you. And now, as a souvenir, and some slight recompense of your services, take this.”
The waterman feels a piece of paper pressed into his hand, its crisp rustle proclaiming it a bank-note. It is a “tenner,” but in the darkness he cannot tell, and believing it only a “fiver,” still thinks it too much. For it is all extra of his fare.
With a show of returning it, and, indeed, the desire to do so, he says protestingly—
“I can’t take it, Captain. You ha’ paid me too handsome, arredy.”
“Nonsense, man! I haven’t done anything of the kind. Besides, that isn’t for boat hire, nor yourself; only a little douceur, by way of present to the good dame inside the cottage—asleep, I take it.”
“That case I accept. But won’t my mother be grieved to hear o’ your goin’ away—she thinks so much o’ ye, Captain. Will ye let me wake her up? I’m sure she’d like to speak a partin’ word, and thank you for this big gift.”
“No, no! don’t disturb the dear old lady. In the morning you can give her my kind regards, and parting compliments. Say to her, when I return to Herefordshire—if I ever do—she shall see me. For yourself, take my word, should I ever again go rowing on this river it will be in a boat called the Mary, pulled by the best waterman on the Wye.”
Modest though Jack Wingate be, he makes no pretence of misunderstanding the recondite compliment, but accepts it in its fullest sense, rejoining—
“I’d call it flattery, Captain, if’t had come from anybody but you. But I know ye never talk nonsense; an’ that’s just why I be so sad to hear ye say you’re goin’ off for good. I feeled so bad ’bout losin’ poor Mary; it makes it worse now losin’ you. Good night!”