Part 7 (2/2)
”Well, well, but you agree to my plan?” asked the captain.
”Shall I agree, Minnie? it will separate me from you again for some time.”
”Yet it is necessary,” answered Minnie, sadly; ”yes, I think you should agree to go.”
”Very well, then, that's settled,” said Ruby, ”and now let us drop the subject, because I have other things to speak of; and if I must start before daylight my time with you will be short--”
”Come here a bit, nephy, I want to have a private word with 'ee in my cabin,” said the captain, interrupting him, and going into his own room.
Ruby rose and followed.
”You haven't any--”
The captain stopped, stroked his bald head, and looked perplexed.
”Well, uncle?”
”Well, nephy, you haven't--in short, have ye got any money about you, lad?”
”Money? yes, a _little_; but why do you ask?”
”Well, the fact is, that your poor mother is hard up just now,” said the captain earnestly, ”an' I've given her the last penny I have o' my own; but she's quite--”
Ruby interrupted his uncle at this point with a boisterous laugh. At the same time he flung open the door and dragged the old man with gentle violence back to the kitchen.
”Come here, uncle.”
”But, avast! nephy, I haven't told ye all yet.”
”Oh! don't bother me with such trifles just now,” cried Ruby, thrusting his uncle into a chair and resuming his own seat at his mother's side; ”we'll speak of that at some other time; meanwhile let me talk to mother.”
”Minnie, dear,” he continued, ”who keeps the cash here; you or mother?”
”Well, we keep it between us,” said Minnie, smiling; ”your mother keeps it in her drawer and gives me the key when I want any, and I keep an account of it.”
”Ah! well, mother, I have a favour to ask of you before I go.”
”Well, _Ruby_?”
”It is that you will take care of my cash for me. I have got a goodish lot of it, and find it rather heavy to carry in my pockets--so, hold your ap.r.o.n steady and I'll give it to you.”
Saying this he began to empty handful after handful of coppers into the old woman's ap.r.o.n; then, remarking that ”that was all the browns”, he began to place handful after handful of s.h.i.+llings and sixpences on the top of the pile until the copper was hid by silver.
The old lady, as usual when surprised, became speechless; the captain smiled and Minnie laughed, but when Ruby put his hand into another pocket and began to draw forth golden sovereigns, and pour them into his mother's lap, the captain became supremely amazed, the old woman laughed, and,--so strangely contradictory and unaccountable is human nature,--Minnie began to cry.
Poor girl! the tax upon her strength had been heavier than anyone knew, heavier than she could bear, and the sorrow of knowing, as she had come to know, that it was all in vain, and that her utmost efforts had failed to ”keep the wolf from the door”, had almost broken her down. Little wonder, then, that the sight of sudden and ample relief upset her altogether.
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