Old Mrs Pringle was still alive and well when True Blue had last heard from home, and to her house he and his shipmates were now bound. Still, as they went along, True Blue could not help looking into all the windows of the various cottages they passed, just to ascertain if that was the one inhabited by his dear old granny or not.
At last he turned to Harry. “I think, mate, we have run our distance,” he observed; “we ought to be in the latitude of Paradise Row by this time. I’ll just step up to that pretty little cottage there and ask. Here, Harry, just hold Chatterbox, please.”
Suiting the action to the word, having given his parrot to his friend, up to the cottage he went. It had a porch in front of it, covered with jasmine, and a neat verandah, and was altogether a very tasty though unpretending little abode. He rapped at the door with a strangely-carved shark’s tooth which he held in his hand. After waiting a little time, the door was opened, and, without looking directly at the person who opened it, he began, “Please, marm, does Mrs Pringle live hereabouts?” Then, suddenly he was heard to exclaim, “What—it is—Mary, Mary!”
What more he said his friends did not hear, for the door was nearly closed as he sprang into the house. However, both Harry and Sam were very discreet people, and they had heard enough to show them that their presence could easily be dispensed with; so, as there was a nice grassy bank under a widespreading tree, they, with the two seamen carrying the bags, and the monkey and the parrots, went and sat down there to wait till the boatswain might recollect that there were such beings in existence.
Harry felt very glad that his friend was likely to be so happy, and old Sam amused himself with scratching the monkey’s head, making him hang by his tail, and jump over his own wooden leg, while the seamen went to sleep with their heads on the bags. Sam was the first to grow tired of his amusement, and, getting up, he stumped up towards the cottage and peeped over the neat white blind of the front window.
He came back grinning and chuckling. “All right,” he said. “Him bery happy—no tink of us yet, I guess.”
Whether or not the apparition of Sam’s black visage had been seen does not appear; but in a short time True Blue came to the door of the cottage, looking as happy and lighthearted as a fellow could look, and, hailing his friends, asked them to step in.
Mrs Ogle was there, and Mary, and a younger sister very like her; but Peter was aboard his ship, a seventy-four, in Portsmouth Harbour; and Mary and her sister, and their mother, shook hands heartily with Sam, because he was an old acquaintance, and with Harry, because he was True Blue’s brother officer. And then True Blue told Harry that Mrs Ogle could put him up, and would be right glad to do so; and then that he could take Sam to Mrs Pringle’s, so that they should have him always to play to them; which were very pleasant arrangements, and seemed to give infinite satisfaction to all parties concerned. It was extraordinary how long it took to get under weigh again; but at last True Blue, with his bags and some of his treasures, did find his way to his adopted grandmother’s, and a warm welcome did the dear old lady give him, and did not scold him in the least for inquiring first at Mrs Ogle’s where she lived, seeing that he did not know when he went to the door that it was Mrs Ogle’s.
Sam and the monkey, and two of the parrots, with the cage birds, took up their residence at Mrs Pringle’s. True Blue, accompanied by Harry, paid a visit to Mrs Bush and her family; and the whole party assembled, as they had done several years before, at Mrs Ogle’s, which had certainly the handsomest room in it, and Sam Smatch brought his fiddle; and a very merry evening they had, the only drawback being that the three elder warrant-officers were unable to be present, as their duties kept them on board their ships.
They had tea and cakes, and bread and butter, and preserves, and water-cresses; and then Sam screwed up his fiddle, and to work went his bow, his head nodding and his timber toe beating time, while he played the merriest of all merry country-dances and the most vehement of hornpipes.