Tim was no more selfish a fellow than is the rule with the sons of such merchants, and especially such step-mothers. He would, perhaps, have stayed by Mr. Waddy had that gentleman been in positive danger, but seeing that he was not only not drowning, but had the child safe by the hair, Tim whipped up and got on board just in time.
Cunarders do not wait for passengers who choose to go a-ducking after top-heavy children. Tim told his story. Mrs. Budlong and most of the commercial gentry rather laughed at Mr. Waddy. Dunstan and Paulding said nothing to them. They, however, seemed to have an opinion on the subject which prevented them from any further interchange of cigars with Master Timothy. Dunstan looked up Chin Chin, Mr. Waddy’s Chinese servant, and by dint of pulling his ears and cue and saying Hi yah! a great many times, made him understand that his master was left, and he, Chin Chin, must pack up the traps, and for the present obey the cue-puller.
It was a very tender and beautiful thing to see how Mr. Waddy raised the insensible boy up from the boat below to the jetty. He wrapped the dripping object without scruple in his own very neat and knowing travelling jacket and carried him toward the mother, who had seen the accident from a distance and was running wildly toward them. She clasped the child to her breast, and, at the beating of her heart, life seemed suddenly to thrill through the saved one. He opened his eyes and smiled through his gasping agony.
Then the mother turned, seized Mr. Waddy in an all-round embrace, and gave him a stout fisherwoman’s smack. It was a first-class salute for the returning hero.
He disentangled himself from this codfishy network; then, looking up, he suddenly fell to swearing violently in a variety of Oriental languages. The Niagara was just off under full headway. Two men, probably Dunstan and Paulding, were waving their handkerchiefs from the quarter-deck.
Mr. Waddy stopped swearing as suddenly as he had begun and burst into a roar of laughter; then he looked ruefully at his shirt.
The fisherwoman was occupied in punching the child’s ribs and standing it on its head. It was spouting water like the fountain of Trevi, and gurgling out lusty screams that proved the efficacy of the treatment.
“Mrs. Hawkins,” said Waddy, becoming conscious that he had observed her name over her door in his momentary coup d’œil before he sprang into the water; “Mrs. Hawkins, I am wet; you will have to dry me.”
“Why, so you are,” said the lady, “wet as a swab. Sammy, you jest git up an’ go in the shop, an’ don’t you be fallin’ overboard ag’in an’ botherin’ the gentleman.”
She accompanied this advice with a box on the ear of the sobbing Sammy, which started Trevi again.