CHAPTER III.

THINKING IT OVER.

"You took Dan up sharp, brother," said Bessy, as her son quitted the

cottage.

"Maybe I did," answered Ned, frankly. "I'm trying to keep down that

hot temper of mine, but there's nothing stirs it up like anything of

deceit, and it gets in a blaze afore I'm aware. There was something

in the lad's looks more than his words, that made me fancy him one of

those who don't see clearly the difference atween truth and falsehood,

and who get amongst the shoals almost without knowing it. I wanted to

show him the beacon lights set in the Bible to warn us off them, that's

all."

"Ah! Dan's quick enough at lying," said Bessy, with a sigh. "I can't

believe a word that he says. Many and many's the time I tells him,

'Dan, with all those fine stories of yours, you'll get into trouble at

last.'"

"And don't you tell him," said Ned, "that God hears, and marks down,

and that 'every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account

thereof in the Day of Judgment'?" *

* Matt. xii. 36.

"Oh! I'm not one of your saints that likes religion brought in at every

turn," said Bessy, peevishly. "'Tis all well enough to go decently to

church on Sundays: and dear me!" she exclaimed, suddenly interrupting

herself, and starting up from her seat. "If that is not Mrs. Curtis

coming over the green! That woman is always taking one unawares."

And, with a quickness which astonished the sailor, Bessy whisked off

the dish from the table, flung an old shawl over the large piece of

bacon from which the rashers had been cut, and stowed away a heap of

damp linen which she had been washing into a cupboard.

"She's in a mighty hurry to tidy the room for the lady," thought Ned,

"but it doesn't look a bit neater than before."

Just as Bessy had finished her hasty preparations, Mrs. Curtis, a

small, delicate lady, very simply but neatly dressed, tapped at the

door of the cottage, and entered. Bessy was all smiles and curtsies;

she dusted a chair and placed it for her guest, hoped that she had

not been troubled by the heat of the day, and asked after "the young

masters and misses," like one who took an affectionate interest in the

well-being of the family.

"I am glad to see your brother here," said Mrs. Curtis, courteously

bending her head as the sailor respectfully rose at her entrance.

"Ah! Yes, poor fellow!" exclaimed Bessy. "He's my only brother living,

and as long as I have a crust, he shall be welcome to share it. We must

all care for one another, ma'am, as our good minister told us last

Sunday in his beautiful sermon."

"It would be but fair," thought Ned, "if Bessy gave the lady a notion

that I pay for this half-crust with the whole of my pension."

"It's but a poor home that my brother has come to," continued Bessy,

whose voice, in addressing the clergyman's wife, had a plaintive

drawling tone, quite unlike that in which she usually spoke. "I have

been wanting much, ma'am, to speak a word or two to you or to Mr.

Curtis."

"My husband told me that he intended to call here soon," said the lady.

"Ah! How glad I am even to see his blessed face. Ah! What I owe him,"

cried Bessy, heaving a long sigh, as if to express by it gratitude

too deep for words. "But what I was a-going to say, ma'am, was, that

I hopes as how Mr. Curtis will be good enough to put me again on the

widows' list for the loaves. I've really such a hard pull to live,

I don't know how we can get on without it;" and there was another

long-drawn sigh.

"Ha!" thought the indignant sailor. "The gratitude was for favours to

come."

"I don't see how my husband can put you on the needy widows' list,"

said the clergyman's quiet little wife; "your daughter is in service,

your son gets work, you take in washing—"

"Please, ma'am, begging pardon for interrupting you," said Bessy, again

dropping a curtsey, "the trifle Dan earns would not keep him in bread

(and it's little but bread as ever we tastes), and I've not had all

this blessed week more than tenpence worth of washing, and—" here Bessy

Poole's eyes chanced to meet those of her brother, flashing on her a

glance of such fiery indignation, that, quite confused, she stopped

short, stammered, and could not finish what she was saying.

Mrs. Curtis naturally turned to see the cause of the cottager's evident

embarrassment, and was much struck by the stern countenance of the

young man, who stood tightly pressing his lips together, as if to keep

in some indignant burst. Finding that he had attracted notice, Ned, who

had no wish to expose his sister, and who had difficulty in commanding

himself, thought it safest to quit the cottage without uttering a word.

"Is anything the matter with your brother?" asked the lady, after Ned's

abrupt departure.

"He has an odd temper, ma'am, very odd; I know that we shall have

a good deal to put up with, but, as our good minister told us last

Sunday—" and the woman went on with a string of what were meant as

pious phrases, but which, being only lip-deep, made far less impression

on her visitor than the speaker wished and intended.

"She talk to her son about truth," exclaimed the indignant Ned Franks,

as he strode into the back-garden, forgetful, in the storm of his

spirit, of the twenty miles which he had walked in the morning. "An

acted lie is as bad as a spoken one, and her way of going on was all

one wretched piece of acting from beginning to end. If there's one

thing I scorn, despise, and detest more than another, it's hypocrisy

like that."

Ned struck the nailed heel of his boot violently against one of the

weeds, and uprooted it from the ground; perhaps he connected the

worthless plant in his mind with the more hateful weed of deceit, or he

wanted something on which to vent the angry feelings within him.

"All weeds!" he muttered to himself, "I've a great mind to hoist sail

at once and sheer off, and find some other home where all will be open

and above board, at least where there will be no hoisting of false

colours, or hanging out of false lights, saying one thing and thinking

another."

Ned took one or two rapid turns up and down the garden; then gradually

slackened his pace as his anger began to cool down.

"Who am I that I should judge another?" thought the frank-hearted

seaman. "Are we not all of an evil nature, our souls as full of

wickedness as this wretched garden of weeds? There's nothing good grows

of itself, it's all God's grace as plants it. Am I—wilful wayward

sinner as I have been—am I to throw my own sister overboard, because

she has not yet been led to see things as I see them, and to know that

the straight course is the shortest course, and the only course that

can land us in a safe haven at last? Maybe, with prayer and pains,

we'll get the better both of her weeds and mine; I master my impatience

and bad temper, she, and that lad of hers, learn that 'a lying tongue

is an abomination unto the Lord', * and that all who serve a God of

Truth must speak the truth from the heart."

* Proverbs vi. 17.

Ned took another turn up and down, stooping down now and then to pull

up and throw away some straggling weed, till he found his spirit calm

enough for prayer. The sailor looked up at the sky, so blue, and clear,

and transparent above him, and his heart rose, in what was earnest

supplication, though he could not have put it into a regular form of

prayer. He wished that his deeds, and his sayings, and those of his

family, might be pure, and clear, and open as heaven's sunlight; that

they might be in the sight of God what they wanted to appear in the

sight of men, and be honest and true in all things, like faithful

servants of the Lord.

Ned's meditations were broken in upon by Bessy Peele, who came running

up towards him, with a bustling, excited air.

"What's in the wind?" cried Ned.

"You must come in directly," answered Bessy. "Who do you think is in my

kitchen—I knew she'd be here—but I'm sure—for Lady Barton herself to

walk all the way from the Hall!"

"What has she come for?" asked Ned, knitting his brow from an uneasy

apprehension of what was likely to follow.

"To hear about her son, to be sure! Lady Barton thinks no end of her

son—a pretty scapegrace though he be! When he left her, she lay crying

in her bed for a week—there was never a mother so fond—or so blind!"

"But what can I say?" exclaimed Ned. "I can tell nothing good of the

lad!"

"You must invent something good then!" cried Bessy, in an irritated

tone. "I can't have you, with your stupid bluntness, setting my

landlord's wife against me, and getting my home pulled down over my

head at Michaelmas, and my boy turned off, and my washing taken away!"

"I'd better not see Lady Barton," said Ned.

"Shall I hurry back and say I couldn't find you? You could get over yon

hedge and be off, without coming in front of the cottage."

"No—no sneaking," said the sailor, quickly. "I'll face out the matter

at once!"

"And you'll say the best you can!" cried Bessy, changing her tone and

tactics with a perception that her best chance with Ned lay in working

upon his affection. "You wouldn't injure your poor widowed sister, as

looks to you for comfort and kindness?"

"I'll do no harm—if I can help it!" muttered the tar, feeling far more

uneasy as he followed his sister than he would have done had he been

led up to an enemy's battery.