“Now, Abe, don’t you know how particular Mr. Poynter is that none of the young gentlemen should carry their boxes about?”
“Why, ma’am,” he answered, “Master Baldwin’s going to sea, and he’ll have more hard work to do than help an old man to carry an empty box.”
“That will do, Abe. Mind, if I find you disobeying orders again, I shall tell Mr. Poynter.—Now, Master Baldwin, I do not think you can be any use here. I will leave out your best suit for you to go away in, and will have a place for your books. You had better go to the room and get all your belongings together in the way of bats and balls, and pack them in your play-box.”
Old Abe and I left the room at once, and he said to me,—
“Now that’s done. She can’t abear an old man getting a bit of help. But, Master Baldwin, there are your rabbits and pigeons. Now, there’s not a boy among them all who takes care of their pets like you do. I wonder what will become of them!”
I certainly was flattered by what old Abe said, for I believed my white Himalayan rabbits, with their black noses and ears, and my pair of tumbler pigeons, to be the best of all the pets which were kept by the boys in the school playground; and I also prided myself that the rabbit-hutch and dove-cot, which I had made with my own hands, were superior to the various receptacles of the pets of my schoolfellows. I therefore fell into the trap which he had set for me.
“Why, Abe, I don’t know. There’s Jones Major, he has some pigeons, and looks well after them; and Brown too, he has lost his two carriers; and Smith, he has been wanting to buy my rabbits this long time.”
“Surely, sir, a gentleman like you, a-leaving school and going to sea, and all, can’t be thinking of selling his rabbits. Sailors are fine generous fellows, and they always give away things. I mind one I saw not a fortnight agone as gave an old man a ten-shilling bit. But don’t you be after giving them lovely rabbits to that young Smith; he don’t know how to feed or look after them, and they’ll be dead in a week with him. And as for Master Brown, it’s my opinion he kept his carriers so dirty and half-starved, that when he let them out they made up their minds not to come back again. Now, sir, I could keep them nicely. I do love a good pigeon and a handsome rabbit; and I can warrant you that they’d be well taken care of.”
I had certainly had an idea of selling both pigeons and rabbits to pay some small schoolboy debts; but I felt my character as a generous sailor was at stake, and not to be outdone by the anonymous sailor who gave an old man a ten-shilling bit, I gave rabbits and pigeons to old Abe. He then asked me to come and look at my boots and shoes, and would soon have begged all from me if Mrs. Stevens had not arrived upon the scene and sent him about his work, grumbling sadly at being sent away from a young gentleman whom he always said “was the nicest lad he had ever set his eyes on.”
Mrs. Stevens told me I must learn not to be taken in; and when I said I had given my rabbits and pigeons to old Abe because he would look after them, she said, “Why, you must be foolish. Master Baldwin. He will sell them before you have left the place.”