“Cap’n’s ready to go aboord, sir,” said O’Riley, touching his cap to Captain Ellice while he was yet engaged in discussing the letter with his son.
“Very good.”
“An’, plaaze sir, av ye’ll take the throuble to look in at Mrs Meetuck in passin’, it’ll do yer heart good, it will.”
“Very well, we’ll look in,” replied the captain as he quitted the house of the worthy pastor.
The personage whom O’Riley chose to style Mrs Meetuck was Meetuck’s grandmother. That old lady was an Esquimaux whose age might be algebraically expressed as an unknown quantity. She lived in a boat turned upside down, with a small window in the bottom of it, and a hole in the side for a door. When Captain Ellice and Fred looked in, the old woman, who was a mere mass of bones and wrinkles, was seated on a heap of moss beside a fire, the only chimney to which was a hole in the bottom of the boat. In front of her sat her grandson, Meetuck, and on a cloth spread out at her feet were displayed all the presents with which that good hunter had been loaded by his comrades of the Dolphin. Meetuck’s mother had died many years before, and all the affection in his naturally warm heart was transferred to, and centred upon, his old grandmother. Meetuck’s chief delight in the gifts he received was in sharing them, as far as possible, with the old woman. We say as far as possible, because some things could not be shared with her, such as a splendid new rifle, and a silver-mounted hunting-knife and powder-horn, all of which had been presented to him by Captain Guy over and above his wages, as a reward for his valuable services. But the trinkets of every kind which had been given to him by the men were laid at the feet of the old woman, who looked at everything in blank amazement yet with a smile on her wrinkled visage that betokened much satisfaction. Meetuck’s oily countenance beamed with delight as he sat puffing his pipe in his grandmother’s face. This little attention, we may remark, was paid designedly, for the old woman liked it, and the youth knew that.
“They have enough to make them happy for the winter,” said Captain Ellice, as he turned to leave the hut.
“Faix, they have. There’s only two things wantin’ to make it complate.”
“What are they?” enquired Fred.
“Murphies and a pig, sure. That’s all they need.”
“Wots come o’ Dumps and Poker?” enquired Buzzby, as they reached the boat.