Mrs Roby pointed to a chair and begged Captain Wopper to sit down, which he did after bestowing a somewhat pointed glance at the chair, as if to make sure that it could bear him.
“You was a nuss once, I’m told,” continued the seaman, looking steadily at Mrs Roby as he sat down.
“I was,” answered the old woman, glancing at the photographs over the chimney-piece, “in the same family for many years.”
“You’ll excuse me, ma’am,” continued the seaman, “if I appear something inquisitive, I want to make sure that I’ve boarded the right craft d’ee see—I mean, that you are the right ’ooman.”
A look of surprise, not unmingled with humour, beamed from Mrs Roby’s twinkling black eyes as she gazed steadily in the seaman’s face, but she made no other acknowledgment of his speech than a slight inclination of her head, which caused her tall cap to quiver. Captain Wopper, regarding this as a favourable sign, went on.
“You was once, ma’am, I’m told, before bein’ a nuss in the family of which you’ve made mention, a matron, or somethin’ o’ that sort, in a foundlin’ hospital—in your young days, ma’am?”
Again Mrs Roby admitted the charge, and demanded to know, “what then?”
“Ah, jus’ so—that’s what I’m comin’ to,” said Captain Wopper, drawing his large hand over his beard. “You was present in that hospital, ma’am, was you not, one dark November morning, when a porter-cask was left at the door by some person unknown, who cut his cable and cleared off before the door was opened,—which cask, havin’ on its head two X’s, and bein’ labelled, ‘This side up, with care,’ contained two healthy little babby boys?”
Mrs Roby, becoming suddenly grave and interested, again said, “I was.”
“Jus’ so,” continued the captain, “you seem to be the right craft—’ooman, I mean—that I’m in search of. These two boys, who were supposed to be brothers, because of their each havin’ a brown mole of exactly the same size and shape on their left arms, just below their elbows, were named ‘Stout,’ after the thing in which they was headed up, the one bein’ christened James, the other Willum?”