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.