The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani once his second-speech.
But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached Southampton, Mamma asked her if she would not like to see the ayah again. Judy’s blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and she said: ‘Ayah! What ayah?’
Mamma cried over her and Punch marvelled. It was then that he heard for the first time Mamma’s passionate appeal to him never to let Judy forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious rune that he called ‘Sonny, my soul,’ Punch could not understand what Mamma meant. But he strove to do his duty; for, the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said to Judy: ‘Ju, you bemember Mamma?’
‘’Torse I do,’ said Judy.
‘Then always bemember Mamma, ’r else I won’t give you the paper ducks that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me.’
So Judy promised always to ‘bemember Mamma.’
Many and many a time was Mamma’s command laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.
‘You must make haste and learn to write, Punch,’ said Papa, ‘and then you’ll be able to write letters to us in Bombay.’
‘I’ll come into your room,’ said Punch, and Papa choked.
Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy to task for not ‘bemembering,’ they choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth for a kiss.