“Calliforny?” cried Larry.
“Yes, that was it.”
“I towld ye that, Bunco!” exclaimed the Irishman, becoming excited; “go on, dear.”
“Well, it seems there’s some difficulties in the matter, wich I’m sure don’t surprise me, for I never ’eard of things as ’ad to do with estates and law as didn’t create difficulties, and I’m thankful as I’ve got nothin’ to do with none of such things. Well, the end of it all is that, w’en master was dyin’, he made missis swear as she’d urge Master Will to go to see after things hisself, an’ missis, poor dear, she would rather let the estate and all the gold go, if she could only keep the dear boy at ’ome, but she’s faithful to her promise, an’ advises him to go—the sooner the better—because that would let him come back to her all the quicker. Master Will, he vowed at first that he would never more leave her, and I b’lieve he was in earnest, but when she spoke of his father’s wish, he gave in an’ said he would go, if she thought it his dooty so for to do.”
“Hooray!” shouted Larry, jumping up at this point, and performing a species of war-dance for a few moments, and then sitting down and demanding another supply of tea. “Didn’t I tell ye, Bunco, that the order would soon be up anchor an’ away again! It’s Wanderin’ Will he’s been named, an’ Wanderin’ Will he’ll remain, that’s as plain as the nose on me face.”
“No doubt the nose on your face is very plain—the plainest I ever did see,” said Maryann sharply,—“but you’re quite wrong about Master Will, for he’s very anxious to get married, I can tell you, an’ wants to settle down at ’ome, like a sensible man, though it does grieve my ’eart to think of the creetur as has took him in in furrin parts.”
“Get married!” exclaimed Larry, Jemima, and Richards in the same breath.
“Yes, get married,” replied Maryann, very full of the importance of her keyhole discoveries, and not willing to make them known too readily.
“How did you come to know that, Maryhann?” asked Jemima; “are you sure of it?”
“How I came for to know it,” replied the other, “is nobody’s business (she paused a moment and looked sternly at Richards, but that sensible man continued to gaze steadfastly at his plate and to ‘scrunch’ crusts with grave abstraction), and, as to its bein’ true, all I can say is I had it from his own lips. Master Will has no objection to my knowing what he tells his mother—as no more he shouldn’t, for Jemimar, you can bear me witness that I’ve been a second mother to him, an’ used to love him as if he were my own—though he was a aggrawatin’ hinfant, an’ used to bump his ’ead, an’ skin his knees, an’ tear his clothes, an’ wet his feet, in a way that often distracted me, though I did my very best to prevent it; but nothink’s of any use tryin’ of w’en you can’t do it; as my ’usband, as was in the mutton-pie line, said to the doctor the night afore he died—my ’eart used to be quite broke about him, so it did; but that’s all past an’ gone—well, as I was a-sayin’, Master Will he told his mother as ’ow there was a young lady (so he called her) as ’ad won his ’art, an’ she was a cannibal as lived on a coal island in the Paphysic Ocean. Then he told her some stories about the coal island as made my blood run cold, and said his Flora behaved like a heroine in the midst of it all.”