The Widow Stubbs heard this with surprise and indignation. She had been much distressed when Dicky had run away to join the Continental navy, although he never got farther than the merchant ship Betsey; but his apparent eagerness to promise he would not do so any more struck her as a want of spirit in the boy that mortified her keenly.
“Why, Dicky Stubbs!” she exclaimed, and said no more for very shame of him.
“Yes; we take paroles,” said Captain Forrester, supposing Dicky knew it referred only to officers.
“Then, sir,” cried Dicky, whose ideas of a parole were very hazy, “all I’ve got to say is that I don’t want no parole,—I wouldn’t take it if you was to offer it to me,—and I ain’t going to give no promise about not running away again. Just as soon as I am big enough to carry my father’s musket I’m a-going to enlist in the ’Merican army under General Washington, and it won’t be long before I do it, neither!”
This sudden outbreak was followed by the Widow Stubbs clasping Dicky in her arms and crying,“That’s my own boy!” while Jack Bell said “Hooray!” under his breath.
But Captain Forrester, instead of sternly calling upon Dicky to recant, as Dicky hoped, who meant to hurl defiance at him, only laughed. Dicky could have cried with rage and disappointment when the captain got up, still laughing, and said:—
“General Washington will gain a valuable recruit, and King George a dangerous enemy.”
“I hope you’ll excuse him,” said the widow, smiling, but a little ashamed of Dicky’s forwardness; “he doesn’t mean to be impudent.”
“I know it,” said the captain. “He is a lad of spirit, and I like that kind. I will now bid you good evening with a thousand thanks for your kindness to my son; and if you get in any trouble with that youngster of yours, write to General Prescott and mention my name; and as for you, Bell, the less we say about the days on the Indomptable and the old Colossus, the better, eh?”
Jack Bell grinned broadly at that and answered:—