After the railway journey, whose slight fatigue the convalescent bore capitally, they went straight to an hotel and had lunch, and there Lucy left her husband and little Hugh, while she went in quest of “apartments.” She wanted cleanliness, economy, and a sea view. Like all people who know what they want she was not long in getting suited. She decided on the second set of rooms at which she looked, preferring them to the first, because being upstairs, they commanded a wider horizon. Also she felt attracted to the second landlady, a quiet, grave, middle-aged woman of few words, whose chambers, with their well-kept old-fashioned furniture had—what is the greatest charm of hired rooms—no suggestion of previous temporary occupancy.
The landlady had everything made snug before their arrival; the curtains were drawn, a cheerful fire was ablaze, and the lit lamp stood in the centre of the table spread with pretty blue crockery and provided with ham, eggs and toast. There are few who can wholly resist the genial influence of such surroundings. Charlie and Lucy Challoner yielded themselves up to them, and little Hugh danced and clapped his hands. Lucy felt as if she was happier than she had ever thought to be again. Safe from the impending worries of the last few days, it seemed as if the great anxiety which hung like a Damocles’ sword over her life was for the time held off.
“I believe this is really doing you good, Lucy,” said her husband. “For me, I feel a different man already.”
The bed-chamber opened from the parlour, and Hugh was not allowed to be long in seeking the little cot which the landlady had fixed up for him in his parents’ room. But while Lucy passed to and fro unpacking and preparing for the night, Mr. Challoner and Hugh got behind the window curtains and shut themselves away from the cheery room and out with the misty sea view. Lucy could hear them talking behind the drapery.
“There go the ships!” said the young father. “Look, Hugh, you can see them by their lights! Look what a lot of them there are! And how many lights they are showing!”
“How glad the sailors must be to see land again!” lisped Hugh. “They must feel they are safe at last!”
“Glad to feel they are nearly home at last, Hugh,” corrected his father. “For ships are in much more danger when they are near land than when they are out in mid-ocean. What looks safest isn’t always safe, my boy.”
“I’d like to go on a ship!” said Hugh.
“I daresay you will go in time, sonny,” returned Mr. Challoner. “By-and-by, Hughie, I am going on a big ship—a big ship with three masts—and I am going for a long, long voyage. And you’ll have to take care of mamma while I am away. And then when I come back, and you grow up, very likely you will go for some long voyage, and then I will stay at home and take care of mamma.”
“Are you going to-morrow, papa?” said the little voice in an awed whisper, and Lucy heard a movement as if the curly head snuggled on papa’s shoulder. How good it was of Charlie to tell the child himself! The thought of having to do so had haunted her, for she measured her little lad’s love for his father by what she knew it meant in his life rather than by that childish inadequacy for profound emotion which makes a child such a poignantly pathetic figure when it appears on any tragic scene.