CHAPTER I.

STARTING FOR INDIA.

"FAREWELL Clarence! Ida—good-bye! God's blessing rest on those whom we leave behind us!"

There is the last grasp of the hand—the last wistful gaze on familiar faces—and the bridge is raised, the connecting link with the shore broken. The little crowd assembled on the platform give a faint cheer, and handkerchiefs are waved, as the vessel, starting on her long voyage to India, slowly moves forward through the mass of craft of various kinds that half block up the River Thames. The brown water curdles into cream-like foam under the paddle-wheels, and the smoke from the funnel streams backwards.

Each one on board is taking a last look of old London with her dingy Tower, and the friends lining the shore, who may never be seen again. Now faces can be distinguished no more; the "Alligator" increases her speed as her course is more clear; some of the passengers dive down below into their respective cabins, for a drizzling rain is falling, and soon Loudon herself can no more be viewed behind the forest of masts, swathed in her dun mantle of smoky mist.

Two young men keep their place on the deck, leaning against the bulwarks, unconscious of dripping rain. The taller and finer looking of the two, wrapt in a cloak, might at first sight be recognised as a clergyman, though Harold Hartley took orders but a few months ago. The younger is little more than a lad, numbering, perhaps, sixteen or seventeen summers, with broad shoulders, a form made more for activity than grace, a sunburnt face, and a rough head of hair under his wide-awake; his locks are brown in colour with a little dash of auburn red, which also tints the thick eyebrows which overhang bright intelligent eyes.

"So, Robin, we are fairly started for India!" said Harold, laying his hand on his brother's arm. "We have the meeting with our father to look forward to now; all the partings are over."

"The one bitter parting was over six months ago," observed Robin with feeling, "when we stood by her deathbed, and received her last blessing. Our strongest tie to old England is the grave of our more than mother; though," added the youth, "I never think of her as in the grave." Robin raised his eyes for a moment towards a bit of clear blue in the cloudy sky, which looked to him like a smile from above.

"You and I must not give way to sad thoughts," observed Harold Hartley.

"They are not sad thoughts now," said Robin, "I consider such memories to be like a treasure in a golden casket, to be carried about with us wherever we go; or rather—they are pictures in an album, and when we are far-away in the East, how often shall we open the clasp, and turn over the leaves! There is dear old William Lodge, where we spent such jolly days; the little arbour in the shrubbery—the cote where I kept my pigeons, the parlour where we met for our evening readings, the chair where she—" Robin paused abruptly, and pressed his lips together to keep in a sigh.

"It is a great satisfaction to me," observed Harold, "that she who adopted us, and loved us as her own sons, so fully approved of our giving ourselves to mission work in India."

"The thought of it made Mother so happy!" said Robin, with animation. "Perhaps our going makes her all the happier now, for Mother may be watching us still. I do not like to think how much trouble I gave her, little unmanageable cub that I was!"

"You never gave her a tithe of the trouble that I did," remarked Harold regretfully; "but Mother had the patience of a saint. If I ever do anything for my Master in the mission field, I owe it—under grace—to her."

The rain after a while ceased, and passengers emerged from below to have a sight of Greenwich, as Elizabeth's stately old palace was passed. Suddenly the brothers were surprised by a shrill, familiar voice behind them exclaiming, "Dear me! Can it be! Yes, Harold and Robin Hartley! Though almost grown out of knowledge!"

"Miss Petty!" cried both the brothers at once, turning round to greet an old acquaintance whom they had not seen for seven long years, yet whom they would have recognised by her peculiarities had the seven been numbered thrice.

There stood the small, thin form, a little more shrivelled and bent, there was the familiar face, a good deal more wrinkled, but otherwise little altered. It was surmounted by a bonnet almost as gay as that which, in Robin's childhood, had diverted his attention in church by its gaudy wreath of artificial flowers. There was exactly the same inquisitive expression in the narrow slits of eyes, but the lashes had become white, for eye-lashes are not so easily dyed as hair on head or brows.

"Miss Petty, are you really going to India?" asked Harold, with unaffected surprise; he had almost added "at your age," but happily checked himself ere the words passed his lips. Poor Miss Petty indulged herself in a dream of perpetual youth, from which it would have been discourteous to have awakened her.

"You wonder at my having the courage to cross the sea, but you see I had a reason, a very particular reason," said Miss Petty in a confidential tone, which she was fond of assuming. "My dear friend, Lady O'More—you have of course heard of Sir Patrick O'More—very distinguished man—in high command—had to leave her only child in England last year, on account of measles or mumps, or something of the catching kind of illness. Now Lady O'More wants to have her Shelah with her—such a fond mother, you know; and she could not trust the darling to anyone but me, so I consented, as guardian, you understand, to my dear friend's child, to take her under my care as far as Bombay."

The Hartleys did not inquire whether the friendship, now first heard of by them, was a mere formal correspondence concerning what was really a simple matter of business, Miss Petty, for a consideration, undertaking to play the nurse to a baronet's child. If they guessed this, their guess was not far from the truth, for Miss Petty was so much accustomed to exaggeration, to giving out fiction as fact, merely because she wished it to be so, that her mind had gradually lost all power to discriminate between false and the true. As some persons have no sense of smell, so had she none of the delicate spiritual perception of—and disgust at falsehood, possessed those of sensitive conscience. Miss Petty had not the warning of danger which such perception bestows.

"But what are you going to India for?" inquired Miss Petty, looking up curiously at the tall, graceful, intellectual man whom she had known in his boyhood and early youth.

"I am going out as a missionary," was Harold's reply.

"Oh, dear! What a pity! You might have done much better in England!"

"I do not think so," said Harold.

"I am certain of it," cried Miss Petty. "I saw in the 'Times' that you had taken honours, and come out a double First. You might in time have been a Lord Chancellor, or a Lord Mayor, and have ridden in your carriage and four. Missionaries are as poor as rats, no one thinks anything of them, they ain't in society, you know! You would have done ever so much better for yourself, had you remained at home."

Harold answered with a smile, "I am quite contented with my lot."

"Well, well, you'll repent of your choice one of these days. But what on earth is taking you across the sea, Master Robin? You ought to be learning Greek and Latin at home. You're not fledged; you can't fly about the world as a missionary yet."

"No," laughed Robin, "I'm a callow downy nestling; but I can hop about a little, and I hope to fly when my feathers are grown."

"What can you do?" persisted Miss Petty, who had seated herself on a bench by the bulwarks, prepared for what she called a good long chat with old friends.

"Not much, but I can do something," said Robin, good-humouredly. "I can make a box, pack it, and carry it; groom a horse, shoe it, and ride it; act as clerk or medicine compounder; cut down a tree and light a fire; cook a dinner and eat it, and make myself useful to my father and brother in a general sort of way—at least I'll try to do so."

"But all that won't bring in a penny," observed sage Miss Petty.

"You know that when a piece of machinery is packed up in a box to go some distance, one sticks in little odd items to fill up the crannies and corners, to keep the instrument from being shaken by the jolts on the journey. My brother is the machine, and I—well, I'm one of the odd items to keep him safe and steady," said Robin, gaily.

"You won't like India," observed Miss Petty, shaking her head; "no more shall I, but I don't mean to stay in it long. I hear that snakes, scorpions, cockroaches, and mosquitoes are as plentiful as the blackberries on our hedges, and you feel like a leg of mutton being turned round on a spit before a big kitchen fire!"

Robin laughed so merrily at this description of the miseries before him that his mirth was infectious. "I can't enter into the feelings of a leg of mutton in such a predicament," he cried.

"Ah! Master Robin, you were always fond of joke," said Theresa Petty; "but you'll find life in India no joke, I warrant you. Besides, I can never make out what missionaries want to do with those dirty blackies. Not that I know much about them; I never saw one but that wretched creature whom my cousin brought home as a bearer."

Every trace of mirth vanished from Robin's face in a moment. "You must not—you shall not speak so of dear Prem Dás!" he exclaimed. "Do you not know that he was converted, that my father baptised him, and that he lived Christ's true servant?"

"And died Christ's faithful martyr," was added in Harold's deep rich voice, but in a tone almost too low to catch Miss Petty's attention.

"Oh! You need not fire up, Master Robin; you were not always so very fond. I've heard that one day when you found the idiot praying to a plaster-of-Paris figure, you kicked him as you would have kicked a dog."

"I was a dog when I did so!" exclaimed Robin passionately. "And you do ill to bring up against me an act of childish brutality, of which I shall repent to my dying day!" The youth fiercely strode away to a distant part of the deck, his heart boiling over with anger.

"I see that Robin has lost none of his pepper and mustard," observed Miss Petty in a testy manner; "he never knew how to treat a lady."

"A more courteous, generous-hearted fellow never existed!" exclaimed Harold, almost as indignant as his brother, though he had much more command over his feelings.

"Ah, well! Ah, well! I can't sit gossiping here now, I must go and look after my Lammikin!" cried Miss Petty, rising, and then shuffling towards the companion ladder which led down to the saloon and cabins below. Harold heard her muttering to herself, "None lose their tempers as soon as your saints!"

The old lady had some difficulty in descending the steep steps, for the "Alligator" was beginning to heave up and down, as the ship was nearing the Nore.

Miss Petty made her way to No. 6, the number of her cabin, after blunderingly looking into 4 and 5. She was never clever at finding her way. On pushing back the sliding door of her cabin, she saw her young charge seated on the floor, happily engaged in eating toffy.

Shelah O'More was a child of about five years of age, with fiery red hair and a freckled face. Her nose had an inclination to turn upwards, to counterbalance which the corners of her mouth had a tendency to turn downwards when anything aroused the little girl's ire. Shelah's mouth, however, looked good-tempered enough at the moment, for it was full of the sweets which bedaubed her lips with brown, while her treacle-covered fingers had left an unbecoming smudge of the same on her saucy little nose.

"You dirty young pup! I'm ashamed of you! You're not fit to be seen!" exclaimed the guardian of the baronet's child. "Have you gobbled up all your toffy already?"

"No," replied Shelah, speaking indistinctly and with difficulty, on account of the sticky lump which she was serenely sucking. "I've put what's left in that thing," and the brown-smeared, thick-tipped finger pointed to Miss Petty's new yellow satin workbag.

"Oh! You mischievous monkey; you—you—" And poor Miss Petty made a dash at the bag, which Shelah did not surrender without a struggle. Miss Petty then opened it, and found reels of cotton, bodkin, needle-case, scissors, and thimble, all sticking together in most unlovely union, her exploration only ending in her soiling her own fingers, and utterly losing her temper. The guardian caught hold of Lammikin by the shoulders and gave her a hearty shake, which vigorous action produced a loud roar which resounded over the ship.

This was the first, but was not to be the last struggle between the guardian and her Lammikin charge.