“Christopher Routh.”
“Good God! Kit! I am Captain Geraldine!”
[CHAPTER IX]
“JOY AND SORROW ARE NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOURS”
As I had not been in the habit of asking favours of my superiors, permission was readily given that the English lad should be allowed to share my quarters with me.
I set my servant to work arranging for his comfort, and we sate in my little garden, I dying with curiosity to hear what lucky chance had blown him hither.
“Where is your mother, Kit?” I asked.
At this his eyes filled and his lips trembled, and for some moments he could not reply, during which I was unable to suppress a selfish hope that perchance my time of probation had ended.
“Mother is lost,” he answered, at last. “But let me start fair.” I was pleased to mark the boy spake with an easy address, for I hate the taint of servility above all things. “Ever since I had grown up I have been begging her to let me get to sea, and at length she yielded, in part to my entreaties, and in part to the wishes of some members of The Society who had settled in Boston, in the Province of Massachusetts, and agreed to come out to them. For me, anything answered that would give me my wish, and I did not see that it mattered whether she was among Methodists in England, or among Methodists in America.”
“You are right, my lad; I imagine they would make the world much of a likeness wherever they might be.”