Not long afterwards the Lively Poll arrived in port, and Stephen Lockley hastened to announce his arrival to his wife.
Now it was the experience of Martha Lockley that if, on his regular return to land for his eight days’ holiday, after his eight weeks’ spell afloat, her handsome and genial husband went straight home, she was wont to have a happy meeting; but if by any chance Stephen first paid a visit to the Blue Boar public-house, she was pretty sure to have a miserable meeting, and a more or less wretched time of it thereafter. A conversation that Stephen had recently had with Fred Martin having made an impression on him—deeper than he chose to admit even to himself—he had made up his mind to go straight home this time.
“I’ll be down by daybreak to see about them repairs,” he said to Peter Jay, as they left the Lively Poll together, “and I’ll go round by your old friend, Widow Mooney’s, and tell her to expect you some time to-night.”
Now Peter Jay was a single man, and lodged with Widow Mooney when on shore. It was not, however, pure consideration for his mate or the widow that influenced Lockley, but his love for the widow’s little invalid child, Eve, for whose benefit that North Sea skipper had, in the kindness of his heart, made a special collection of deep-sea shells, with some shreds of bright bunting.
Little Eve Mooney, thin, wasted, and sad, sat propped up with dirty pillows, in a dirty bed, in a dirtier room, close to a broken and paper-patched window that opened upon a coal-yard with a prospect rubbish-heap beyond.
“Oh, I’m so glad it’s you!” cried Eve, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, as the fisherman entered.
“Yes, Eve, my pretty. I’m back sooner than I expected—and look what I’ve brought you. I haven’t forgot you.”
Joy beamed in the lustrous eyes and on every feature of the thin face as the sick child surveyed the treasures of the deep that Lockley spread on her ragged counterpane.
“How good—how kind of you, Stephen!” exclaimed Eve.
“Kind!” repeated the skipper; “nothing of the sort, Eve. To please you pleases me, so it’s only selfishness. But where’s your mother?”