Presently he raised a great shout and clapped his hands, and, getting down from the chair on which he had been standing, tore, shouting through the house, to discover his Aunt Hetty, and tell her the joyful news and fetch his hat.
He found Hetty, and in quick haste the aunt and nephew were out on the little quay or wharf, and stretching towards them, drawn by Francis Bramwell, was the long, low, black floating stage.
Little Frank was not visible. His father had left him safe behind the wall of the yard. It would be unsafe to trust him on the edge of Crawford's Bay, and dangerous to carry two boys of so young an age across that long, oscillating, crank raft.
Hetty stood at the edge of the water holding the boy in her arms.
"How do you do, Mrs. Layard?" said Bramwell, lifting his battered billycock hat as he landed. "I am indebted to your little nephew for your name."
He spoke gravely, with an amelioration of the subdued and serious lines of his face that was almost a smile. During the past two or three days he had not only re-inherited the power of smiling, but had absolutely laughed more than once at some speech or action of his son's, or when his thoughts took a pleasant turn about the boy. But he had been so long out of use in smiling or laughing that he could not yet exercise these powers except in connection with the child.
Hetty in some confusion said she was very well, and thanked him. Freddie's summons had been sudden, and, at the moment, unexpected, so that she felt slightly embarrassed.
"I am sure," the man said, keeping his large, luminous, sphinx-like eyes on her, "it is very good of you to allow your little fellow to come to play with mine. You do me a great kindness in lending him to me. I shall take the utmost care of him, I pledge you my word."
In these few seconds the girl had regained her self-possession, and said, with one of those bright sunny smiles of hers, in which golden light seemed to dance in her blue eyes, "Understand, I allow him to go as a favour."
"Undoubtedly," he said, bowing, and then looking at her with a faint gleam of surprise in his eyes.