'Where is Mrs. Pettican now?' asked Mehalah.
'At the Regatta,' answered the cripple. 'You'll tell your mother how I am situated. She will drop a tear for poor Charlie. I will tell you what, Me——' he looked at his note-book, 'Mehalah; men fancy all girls sultana raisins, but when they bite them they get very hard pips between their teeth. There's a Methodist preacher here has been haranguing on conversion, and persuading Admonition that she is a new creature. I know she is. She was converted on the day of the marriage ceremony; but the conversion was not something to boast of. Matrimony with women is what jibbing is with ships, they go through a movement of staggering and then away they start off on a tack clean contrary to the course they were sailing before. Marriage, Mehalah, is like Devonshire cream; it is very rich and tasty, but it develops a deal of bile. Look here, my pretty!' In a moment he was off his chair, stumping in his crutches round the room, dragging his paralysed limbs after him. He returned to his chair. 'Put up my legs, dear,' he begged; then said, 'That is the state of my case; my better half is Admonition, the poor paralysed, helpless, dead half is me.'
He did not speak for some moments, but brushed his eyes with his feeble hand. At last he said, 'I've unburdened my soul. Tell your mother. Now go ahead, and let me know what you want.'
Mehalah told Mr. Pettican the circumstances. She said that her mother wanted a loan of fifteen or twenty pounds. If she could not procure the sum, she would have her cow taken from her, then they would be unable to pay the rent next Lady Day, and be without milk for the winter. They would be turned out of the little farm on which her mother had lived so long, in quiet and contentment, and this would go far to break her mother's heart. She told him candidly that the loan could only be repaid in instalments.
The old man listened patiently, only passing his hand in an agitated manner across his face several times.
'I wish I could help you,' he said, when she had done; 'I have money. I have laid by some. There is plenty in the box and more at the bank, but I can't get at it.'
'Sir!'
'Before I struck my colours, Mehalah, I did what I liked with my money; on market days my man went into Colchester, and I always gave him a little sum to lay out in presents for my kind visitors. Bless you; a very trifle pleased them. It is different now. I don't spend a penny myself. The money is spent for me. I don't keep the key of my cashbox. Admonition has it.'
'Then,' said Mehalah, rising from her seat, 'all is over with us. My mother, your cousin, will in her old age be cast destitute into the world. But, if you really wish to help her, be a man, use your authority, and do what you choose with your own.'
'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pettican touching his brow with his trembling hand, 'I will be a man. Am I not a man! If I don't exert my authority, people will say I am in my dotage. I—I—in my flower and cream of my age—in the dotage! Go, Me——' he looked in his note-book, 'Mehalah, fetch me my cashbox, it is in the bedroom cupboard upstairs, on the right, over this. Bring the box down. Stay though! Before you come down just feel in my wife's old dress pocket. She may have forgotten to take her keys with her to the Regatta. It is just possible.'