Mary and I, having eaten the provisions he brought in, worked away diligently, thankful to have some employment to occupy our attention. But she stopped every now and then, when her eyes were too full of tears to allow her to see her needle, and sobbed as if her dear heart would break. Then on she went again, sewing as fast as she could, anxious to please old Tom by showing him how much she had done. At length Nancy arrived with a big bundle on her back. “I’ve brought away all I could,” she said, as she deposited her load on the floor. “I’d a hard job to get them, and shouldn’t at all, if Tom Swatridge and two other men hadn’t come in and said they’d be answerable if everything wasn’t all square. He and they were ordering all about the funeral, and I’ve got two women to stay with the missus till she’s put all comfortable into her coffin. Alack! Alack! That I should have to talk about her coffin!” Nancy’s feelings overcame her. On recovering, she, without loss of time, began to busy herself with household duties—lighted the fire, put the kettle on to boil, and made up old Tom’s bed with some fresh sheets which she had brought. “You and I are to sleep here, Mary,” she said, “and Peter is to have a shakedown in the sitting-room.”
“And where is Tom going to put up himself?” I asked.
“That’s what he didn’t say but I fancy he’s going to stay at night with an old chum who has a room near here. He said his place isn’t big enough for us all, and so he’d made up his mind to turn out.”
Such I found to be the case. Nothing would persuade our friend to sleep in his own house, for fear of crowding us. He and several other watermen, old shipmates, and friends of father’s, had agreed to defray the expenses of mother’s funeral, for otherwise she would have been carried to a pauper’s grave. Her furniture and all the property she had possessed were not sufficient to pay her debts contracted during her illness, in spite of all her exertions. We, too, had not Tom taken charge of us, should have been sent to the workhouse, and Nancy would have been turned out into the world to seek her fortune, for her mother was dead, and she had no other relatives. She did talk of trying to get into service, which meant becoming a drudge in a small tradesman’s family, that she might help us with her wages; but she could not bring herself to leave Mary; and Tom, indeed, said she must stay to look after her. As father had had no funeral, his old friends wished to show all the respect in their power to his widow, and a score or more attended, some carrying the coffin, and others walking two and two behind, with bits of black crêpe round their hats and arms, while Mary and I, and Nancy and Tom, followed as chief mourners all the way to Kingston Cemetery. Nancy, with the help of a friend, a poor seamstress, had managed to make a black frock for Mary and a dress for herself, out of mother’s gown, I suspect. They were not very scientifically cut, but she had sat up all night stitching at them, which showed her affection and her desire to do what she considered proper.
Some weeks had passed since mother’s death, and we were getting accustomed to our mode of life. Tom sent Mary to a school near at hand every morning, and she used to impart the knowledge she obtained to me in the evening, including sometimes even sewing.
During the time Mary was at school Nancy went out charing, or tending the neighbours’ children, or doing any other odd jobs of which she was capable, thus gaining enough to support herself, for she declared that she could not be beholden to the old man for her daily food. I always went out with Tom in his boat, and I was now big enough to make myself very useful. He used to make me take the helm when we were sailing, and by patiently explaining how the wind acted on the canvas, and showing me the reason of every manoeuvre, soon taught me to manage a boat as well as any man could do, so that when the wind was light I could go out by myself without the slightest fear.
“You’ll do, Peter; you’ll do,” said the old man, approvingly, when one day I had taken the boat out to Spithead alongside a vessel and back, he sitting on a thwart with his arms folded, and not touching a rope, though he occasionally peered under the foot of the foresail to see that I was steering right, and used the boat-hook when we were going alongside the vessel, and shoving off, which I should have had to do if he had been steering. “You’ll now be able to gain your living, boy, and support Mary till she’s old enough to go out to service, if I’m taken from you, and that’s what I’ve been aiming at.”
Often when going along the Hard a friend would ask him to step into one of the many publics facing it to take a glass of spirits or beer. “No thank ye, mate,” he would reply; “if I get the taste of one I shall be wanting another, and I shouldn’t be happy if I didn’t treat you in return, and I’ve got something else to do with my money instead of spending it on liquor.”
I never saw him angry except when hard pressed by an ill-judging friend to step into a public-house.
“Would you like to see Jack Trawl’s son in a ragged shirt, without shoes to his feet, and his daughter a beggar-girl, or something worse? Then don’t be asking me, mate, to take a drop of the poisonous stuff. I know what I used to be, and I know what I should be again if I was to listen to you!” he exclaimed. “Stand out of my way, now! Stand out of my way! Come along, Peter,” and, grasping my hand with a grip which made my fingers crack, he stumped along the Hard as fast as he could move his timber toe.