“We can’t walk the deck, ma’am. We has to scramble along the best way we can, holdin’ on by hands and teeth and eyelids. Thank ’ee, miss, but I really do think I’d better not try to eat any more. I feels chock-full already, an’ it might be dangerous. There’s severe laws now against overloadin’, you know.”
“No such laws in this house, Billy,” said Ruth, with a laugh. “But now, if you have quite done, I should like to put a few questions to you.”
“Fire away, then, Miss,” said the boy, looking exceedingly grave and wise.
“Well, Billy,” began Ruth, with an eager look, “I want to know something about your dear mother.”
She hesitated at this point as if uncertain how to begin, and the boy sought to encourage her with—“Wery good, Miss, I knows all about her. What d’ee want to ax me?”
“I want to ask,” said Ruth, slowly, “if you know what your mother’s name was before she was married?”
Ruth did not as the reader knows, require to ask this question, but she put it as a sort of feeler to ascertain how far Billy might be inclined to assist her.
“Well, now, that is a stumper!” exclaimed the boy, smiting his little thigh. “I didn’t know as she had a name afore she was married. Leastwise I never thought of it or heerd on it, not havin’ bin acquainted with her at that time.”
With a short laugh Ruth said, “Well, never mind; but perhaps you can tell me, Billy, if your mother ever had a brother connected with the sea—a sailor, I mean.”
“Stumped again!” exclaimed the boy; “who’d have thought I was so ignorant about my own mother? If she ever had sich a brother, he must have bin drownded, for I never heerd tell of ’im.”