"You look real pale to-day," she said. "I was afraid all that mince-pie for supper would be bad for you. Here, Charley, I'll mix you some ginger-and-water. That'll settle you, and make all right again."
"Mis-cre-ant!" was what Charley yearned to say, but instead he muttered, gruffly, "I aint sick, and I don't want no ginger." Very bad grammar, as you perceive; but grammar seemed such an unnecessary accomplishment for a would-be buccaneer, that Charley never could be induced to pay the least attention to it.
That afternoon, under the apple-tree, he made up his mind. A pirate he must and he would be, by fair means or by foul. He was cunning enough to know that the very word "pirate" would frighten his grandmother into fits, so he only asked her leave to go to sea. Going to sea was, to his mind, a necessary first step toward the noble profession he desired to enter.
"I want to so bad," he whined. "Please say I may."
Grandmother began to cry. Aunt Hitty was sure he must be out of his mind, and ran for the Epsom salts. Aunt Greg quoted, "There's no place like home," and told a story about a boy she once heard of who ran away to sea and never came back, "foundered or drowndered," she couldn't remember which. Aunt Prue seized his shoulders and gave him a sound shake. This was what came of idling over story-books all day long, she said,—he could just shut up and go and give the pig its supper, and not let her hear any more trash like that—making them all feel so bad about nothing.
Charley twisted his shoulder out of her grasp with a scowl, but he took the pail and went out to the pen. All the time that piggy ate, he was considering what to do. "I'll tease 'em," he decided, "and tease and tease, and then they'll let me go."
So he did tease, and plead and expostulate, but it was all in vain. Grandmother and the aunts could not be reached by any of his entreaties, and at the end of a week he seemed as far from his desire as ever.
You will wonder, perhaps, that Charley did not run away, as so many boys do in books, and a few out of them. Somehow he never thought of that. He was not a hardy, adventurous fellow at all. His desire to go to sea was a fancy born of foolish reading, and he wanted to have his going made easy for him.
"I must set to work in another way," he thought at last. "Asking of 'em aint no use. I must make 'em want to have me go." Then he fell to thinking how this could be done.
"Aunt Hitty wouldn't hold out long if the others didn't," he thought. "I could coax her into it as easy as fun. She'll do anything if I kiss and pet her a bit. Then there's Aunt Greg,—she thinks so much of poetry and such stuff. I'll hunt up the pieces in the 'Reader' about 'The sea, the sea, the deep blue sea,' and all that, and learn 'em and say 'em to her, and I'll tell her about coral groves and palm-trees, and make her think it's the jimmiest thing going to sail off and visit 'em. Grandmother's always bothering about my being sick, and afraid of this and afraid of that; so I'll just be sick—so sick that nothing but a viyage'll cure me! As for Aunt Prue, 'taint no use trying to impose on her. I guess I'll have to be real hateful and troublesome to Aunt Prue. I'll tease pussy and slop on the pantry shelves, and track up the floor every time she mops it, and leave the dipper in the sink, and all the other things she don't like, and by and by she'll be just glad to see the last of me! Hi!—that'll fetch 'em all!" He ended his reflections with a chuckle. Charley wasn't really a bad boy,—not bad through and through, that is,—but he had a cunning, tricky side to his nature which made him like to play on the weaknesses of his grandmother and aunts. A sharp boy may prove more than a match for four unsuspecting old women; and though in this case they were in the right and he in the wrong, none the less was he likely to succeed in his crafty plans.