Meanwhile Lovibond at Fort Ann was telling a similar story to Captain Davy. He had left the house for a walk before Davy had come down to breakfast, and on returning at noon he found him immersed in the usual occupation of his mornings. This was that of reading and replying to his correspondence. Davy read with difficulty, and replied to all letters by check. His method of business was peculiar and original. He was stretched on the sofa with a pipe in his mouth, and the morning’s letters pigeonholed between his legs. Willie Quarrie sat at a table with a check-book before him. While Davy read the letters one by one he instructed Willie as to the nature of the answer, and Willie, with his head aslant, his mouth awry, and his tongue in his cheek, turned it into figures on the check-book.
As Lovibond came in Davy was knocking off the last batch for the day. “‘Respected sir,’ he was reading, ‘I know you’ve a tender heart’... Send her five pounds, Willie, and tell her to take that talk to the butchers.”
“‘Honored Captain, we are going to erect a new school in connection with Ballajora chapel, and if you will honor us by laying the foundation stone....’ Never laid a stone in my life ‘cept one, and that was my mawther’s sink-stone. Twenty pounds, Willie. ‘Sir, we are to hold a bazaar, and if you will consent to open it....’ Bazaar! I know: a sort of ould clothes shop in a chapel where you’re never tooken up for cheating, because you always says your paternoster-ings afore you begin. Ten pounds, Willie. Helloa, here’s Parson Quiggin. Wish the ould devil would write more simpler; I was never no good at the big spells myself. ‘Dear David....’ That’s good—he walloped me out of the school once for mimicking his walk—same as a coakatoo esactly. ‘Dear David, owing to the lamentable death of brother Mylechreest it has been resolved to ask you to become a member of our committee....’ Com-mittee! I know the sort—kind of religious firm where there’s three partners, only two of them’s sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie.”
This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. “Still bent on spending your money, Captain?” he said. “Don’t you see that the people who write you these begging letters are impostors?”
“Coorse I do,” said Davy. “What’s it saying in the Ould Book? ‘Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ Only, as Parson Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, ‘Summat’s gone screw with the translation theer, friends, should have been vultures.”
“Half of them will only drink your money, Captain,” said Lovibond.
“And what for shouldn’t they? That’s what I’m doing,” said Davy.
“It’s poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn’t always think: money was a thing to pitch into a ditch.”
“Always? My goodness, no!” said Davy. “Time was once when I thought money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a slip of a lad, didn’t I?” said he, sobering very suddenly. “The father was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the lot of us. They all went off except myself—the sisters and brothers. Poor things, they wasn’t willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But there’s mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young ones out, and the mawther’s father was at us still. Lame though of his legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn’t do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats, and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire. The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley—sixpence a day dry days, and fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do’s, mate. And when she’d give the ould man his basin of broth he’d be saying, squeaky-like, ‘Give it to the boy, woman; he’s a growing lad?’ ‘Chut! take it, man,’ the mawther would say, and then he’d be whimpering, ‘I’m keeping you long, Liza, I’m keeping you long.’ And there was herself making a noise with her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth, and swearing to myself like mad, ‘As sure as the living God I’ll be ruch some day.’ And now—”
Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and said shortly, “Where’ve you been to?”