“Yes, though, one of the first Manx estates going. Cæsar had the deeds, but I've been taking them to the High Bailiff, and doing everything regular. When I'm gone, sir——”
Philip tried to protest.
“Aw, but a man can lave what he likes to his own, sir, can't he?”
Philip was silent. He could say nothing. The make-believe was to be kept up to the last tragic moment.
“And out yonder, lying on my hunk in the sheds—good mattresses and thick blankets, Phil, nothing to complain of at all—I'll be watching her growing up, year by year, same as if she was under my eye constant. 'She's in pinafores now' thinks I. 'Now she's in long frocks, and is doing up her hair.' 'She's as straight as an osier now, and red as a rose, and the best looking girl in the island, and the spitting picture of what her mother used to be.' Aw, I'll be seeing her in my mind's eye, sir, plainer nor any potegraph.”
Pete puffed furiously at his pipe. “And the mother, I'll be seeing herself, too. A woman every inch of her, God bless her. Wherever there's a poor girl lying in her shame she'll be there, I'll go bail on that. And yourself—I'll be seeing yourself, sir, whiter, maybe, and the sun going down on you, but strong for all. And when any poor fellow has had a knock-down blow, and the world is darkening round him, he'll be coming to you for light and for strength, and you'll be houlding out the right hand to him, because you're knowing yourself what it is to fall and get up again, and because you're a man, and Grod has made friends with you.”
Pete rammed his thumb into his pipe, and stuffed it, still smoking, into his waistcoat pocket. “Chut!” he said huskily. “The talk a man'll be putting out when he's going away foreign! All for poethry then, or something of that spacious. H'm! h'm!” clearing his throat, “must be giving up the pipe, though. Not much worth for the voice at all.”
Philip could not speak. The strength and grandeur of the man overwhelmed him. It cut him to the heart that Pete could never see, could never hear, how he would wash away his shame.
The child had crawled across the room to an open cabinet that stood in one corner, and there possessed herself of a shell, which she was making show of holding to her ear.
“Well, did you ever?” cried Pete. “Look at that child now. She's knowing it's a shell. 'Deed she is, though. Aw, crawling reg'lar, sir, morning to night. Would you like to see the prettiest sight in the world, Phil?” He went down on his knees and held out his arms. “Come here, you lil sandpiper. Fix that chair a piece nearer, sir—that's the ticket. Good thing Nancy isn't here. She'd be on to us like the mischief. Wonderful handy with babies, though, and if anybody was wanting a nurse now—a stepmother's breath is cold—but Nancy! My gough, you daren't look over the hedge at her lammie but she's shouting fit for an earth wake. Stand nice, now, Kitty, stand nice, bogh! The woman's about right, too—the lil one's legs are like bits of qualebone. 'Come, now, bogh, come?”