“Oh, your cousin Mary, I forgot—fine girl, Tom—may do for you at home yonder,” (all Creoles speak of England as home, although they may never have seen it,) “but she can’t make pepper-pot, nor give a dish of land crabs as land crabs should be given, nor see to the serving up of a ringtail pigeon, nor rub a beefsteak to the rotting turn with a bruised papaw, nor compose a medicated bath, nor, nor—oh, confound it, Tom, she will be, when you marry her, a cold, comfortless, motionless Creole icicle!”
I let him have his swing. “Never mind her then, never mind her, my dear sir; but time presses and I must be off, I must indeed, so good morning; I wish you a good morning, sir.”
He started to his feet, and caught hold of me. “Sha’n’t go, Tom, impossible—come along with me to my lodgings, and breakfast with me. Here, Pilfer, Pilfer,” to his black valet, “give me my stick, and massu the chair, and run home and order breakfast—cold calipiver—our Jamaica salmon, you know, Tom-tea and coffee pickled mackerel, eggs, and cold tongue—any thing that Mother Dingychops can give us; so bolt, Pilfer, bolt!”
I told him that before I came ashore I had heard the gig’s-crew piped away, and that I therefore expected, as Jonathan says, that the captain would be after me immediately; so that I wished at all events to get away from where we were, as I had no desire to be caught gossiping about when my superior might be expected to pass.
“True, boy, true”—as he shackled himself to me, and we began to crawl along towards the wharf-gate leading into the town. Captain Transom by this time had landed, and came up with us.
“Ah, Transom,” said Whiffle, “glad to see you. I say, why won’t you allow Mr Cringle here to go over to Spanish Town with me for a couple of days, eh?”
“Why, I don’t remember that Mr Cringle has ever asked leave.”
“Indeed, sir, I neither did ask leave, nor have I thought of doing so,” said I.
“But I do for you,” chimed in my friend Whiffle. “Come, captain, give him leave, just for two days, that’s a prime chap. Why, Tom, you see you have got it, so off with you and come to me with your kit as soon as possible; I will hobble on and make the coffee and chocolate; and, Captain Transom, come along and breakfast with me too. No refusal, I require society. Nearly drowned yesterday, do you know that? Off this same cursed wharf too—just here. I was looking down at the small fish playing about the piles, precisely in this position; one of them was as bright in the scales as a gold fish in my old grandmother’s glass globe, and I had to crane over the ledge in this fashion,” suiting the action to the word, “when away I went”—
And, to our unutterable surprise, splash went Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, for the second time, and there—he was shouting, and puffing, and splashing in the water. We were both so convulsed with laughter that I believe he would have been drowned for us; but the boat-keeper of the gig, the strong athletic negro before mentioned, promptly jumped on the wharf with his boat-hook, and caught the dapper little old beau by the waistband of his breeches, swaying him up, frightened enough, with his little coat skirts fluttering in the breeze, and no wonder, but not much the worse for it all.