Mrs. De Witt was musing despondingly over her desperate position, when Elijah appeared above the hatchway and descended to the cabin.
Mrs. De Witt had stuck a black bow in her mob cap, as a symbol of her woe. She hardly needed to hang out the flag, for her whole face and figure betokened distress. It cannot be said that her maternal bowels yearned after her son out of love for him so much as out of solicitude for herself. She naturally grieved for her 'poor boy,' but her grief for him was largely tinctured with anxiety for her own future. How should she live? On what subsist? She had her husband's old hull as a home, and a fishing smack, and a rowing boat. There was some money in the box, but not much. 'There's been no wasteful outlay over a burying,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That is a good job.'
But, as already said, Mrs. De Witt only yielded reluctantly to the opinion that her boy was drowned. She held resolutely in public to this view for reasons she confided to herself over her rum. 'It is no use dropping a pint of money in dragging for the body, and burying it when you've got it. To my notion that is laying out five pound to have the satisfaction of spending another five. George was a gentleman,' she said with pride. 'If he was to go from his pore mother, he went as cheap from her as a lad could do it.'
Another reason why she refused to believe in his death was characteristic of the illogicality of her sex. This she announced to Rebow. 'You have it in a nutshell. How can the poor boy be drowned? For, if so, what is to become of me, and I a widow?'
'Mrs. De Witt,' said Rebow, helping himself to some rum, 'you may as well make your mind easy on this point. If George be not dead where can he be?'
'That I do not take on myself to say.'
'He is nowhere on Mersea, is he?'
'Certainly not.'
'He did not go along the Colchester road beyond the Strood?'
'No, or I should have heard of him.'