“Amen,” murmured the widow, as Will drained the glass; “I hope they may get plenty of gold without catching the gold-fever, which is just another name for the love of gold, and that, you know, is the root of all evil. But go on telling me about your adventures, Will; I never tire of hearing you relate them.”
“Well, mother, I’ll begin again, but if you will be for ever interrupting me with questions and remarks about Flora, I shall never get to the end of them. Now, then, listen.”
Hereupon Will began to talk, and his mother to listen, with, we need scarcely say, intense interest.
Thus was the last night of that year passed in the drawing-room. Let us see how it was spent in the kitchen.
“Yes, Jemimar,” said Maryann, with her mouth full of buttered toast, “I always said it, and I always thought it, and I always knowed it, that Master Will would come ’ome, and marry a sweet beautiful young lady, which ’as come true, if ever a profit spoke, since the day of Jackariah—let me fill your cup, my dear, p’raps you’ll ’and me the kettle, Richards.”
The worthy coachman rose with alacrity to obey, and Jemima accepted the proffered cup of tea in the midst of a vain attempt to quiet the baby Richards, which happened to be unusually restive that night.
“To think, too,” continued Maryann with a laugh, “that I should ’ave gone an’ mistook the dear creetur at first for a cannibal!”
“Maryhann,” said Jemima, solemnly, “I don’t believe there’s no such things as cannibals.”
“No more do I, Jemimar—did you speak, Mr Richards?” inquired Maryann, with a sudden assumption of dignity.
The coachman, who was devotedly engaged with his fifth slice of buttered toast, protested solemnly that he had not spoken, but admitted that he had experienced a tendency to choke—owing to crumbs—just at the point when Maryann happened to allude to the cannibals. Maryann had a suspicion that the tendency to choke was owing to other causes than crumbs; but as she could not prove her point, and as the baby Richards took it into his head at that moment to burst into an unaccountable and vehement fit of laughter, she merely tossed her head, and resumed her observations.