“All right, Mr. Cannister; here’s the lost man!” exclaimed young Smith, entering at once upon the old style of greeting. “Father, here I am.”
“All right, my sonny; and glad I be for’t!” returned John Smith, overjoyed to see the young man. “How be ye? Well, come along home, and don’t let’s bide out here in the damp. Such weather must be terrible bad for a young chap just come from a fiery nation like Indy; hey, naibour Cannister?”
“Trew, trew. And about getting home his traps? Boxes, monstrous bales, and noble packages of foreign description, I make no doubt?”
“Hardly all that,” said Stephen laughing.
“We brought the cart, maning to go right on to Castle Boterel afore ye landed,” said his father. “‘Put in the horse,’ says Martin. ‘Ay,’ says I, ‘so we will;’ and did it straightway. Now, maybe, Martin had better go on wi’ the cart for the things, and you and I walk home-along.”
“And I shall be back a’most as soon as you. Peggy is a pretty step still, though time d’ begin to tell upon her as upon the rest o’ us.”
Stephen told Martin where to find his baggage, and then continued his journey homeward in the company of his father.
“Owing to your coming a day sooner than we first expected,” said John, “you’ll find us in a turk of a mess, sir—‘sir,’ says I to my own son! but ye’ve gone up so, Stephen. We’ve killed the pig this morning for ye, thinking ye’d be hungry, and glad of a morsel of fresh mate. And ’a won’t be cut up till to-night. However, we can make ye a good supper of fry, which will chaw up well wi’ a dab o’ mustard and a few nice new taters, and a drop of shilling ale to wash it down. Your mother have scrubbed the house through because ye were coming, and dusted all the chimmer furniture, and bought a new basin and jug of a travelling crockery-woman that came to our door, and scoured the cannel-sticks, and claned the winders! Ay, I don’t know what ’a ha’n’t a done. Never were such a steer, ’a b’lieve.”
Conversation of this kind and inquiries of Stephen for his mother’s wellbeing occupied them for the remainder of the journey. When they drew near the river, and the cottage behind it, they could hear the master-mason’s clock striking off the bygone hours of the day at intervals of a quarter of a minute, during which intervals Stephen’s imagination readily pictured his mother’s forefinger wandering round the dial in company with the minute-hand.
“The clock stopped this morning, and your mother in putting en right seemingly,” said his father in an explanatory tone; and they went up the garden to the door.