‘Well,’ he began, counting upon his fingers, ‘there’s a dinner at the Star and Garter; that’s good sight-seeing number one. Then there’s Greenwich yonder, and another dinner, number two. Then, what say you to Woolwich and a peep at the hulks? Call that job a day on the river, taking a boat at Billingsgate or the Tower. Number three.’
‘Keep in shore, my lad,’ said Captain Butler, laughing. ‘You’ll be having enough of the water soon.’
‘What do ye say to Hampstead and tea? Then a dinner at the King’s Arms at Hampton Court? And is Windsor too far off?’ So he rattled.
Yet the jolly young fellow’s proposals were very well to our liking, and before we rose to depart from the Brunswick Hotel we had schemed out a long holiday week. They saw me to my house, as on the previous night. Neither would come in. When they had left me, I felt very dull and lonely. I found a note on my table from a friend at Bow. She asked me to a card-party next night, but I was in no humour to accept any invitations to houses where I was not likely to meet Captain Butler. Indeed, I had come home from this jaunt to the docks as deeply in love as ever woman was with a man in this world. I slept, it is true, but I dreamed of nothing but my handsome sailor, as my heart was already secretly calling him. I went to sea with him in a number of visions that night, quelled a mutiny among the sailors, saved Captain Butler’s life at the risk of my own; and when he took me in his arms to thank and caress me, I looked in his face, and heavens!—it was my stepfather!
CHAPTER VI
SHE IS ASKED IN MARRIAGE
At the appointed time I was at my aunt’s next morning. Captain Butler and Will were there. We went to Richmond, and after we had arrived it rained for the rest of the day, but it was all one to me; indeed, I would rather have had it rain than sunshine, for it forced us to sit indoors, whilst Will, defying the rain, went out and left Captain Butler and me alone, which was just what I liked.
I will not catalogue these holiday trips; they made me feel as if I were living for the first time in all my life; they made me know that I was a girl with passions and tastes, yet easy to delight. I will not say that I enjoyed my liberty, because for years I had not known what restraint was; but I was sensible that my being able to go where I pleased and to do what I pleased was a prodigious privilege at this time, when I had lost my heart, and must have gone mad had I been withheld from the society of the man who had it.
Two days before Will sailed my aunt called upon me. Our holiday rambles had run out; that day was to be blank, and I was not to see Captain Butler again until Thursday—it was a Thursday, I remember—when we were going down to the docks to see Will off. I remarked a peculiar look in my aunt’s face, which prompted me, in my impetuous way, to say: