The Young Trawler by Robert Michael Ballantyne (classic novels txt) 📕

permission, and Ruth retired. A few minutes later, young Dalton drove away with the captain's chest of gold.

A week after that the mother and daughter drove away from the same door to the railway station, and in process of time found themselves one pleasant afternoon at Yarmouth, in the little parlour with the window that commanded the gorgeous view of the sea, taking tea with the captain himself and his friends Jessie and Kate Seaward.

A lodging had been secured quite close to their own by the Dotropys.

"Now," said Ruth to Jessie that evening in private, with flushed cheeks and eager eyes, "I shall be able to carry out my little plot, and see whether I am right, now that I have at last got Captain Bream down to Yarmouth."

"What little plot?" asked Jessie.

"I may not tell you yet," said Ruth with a laugh. "I shall let you know all about it soon."

But Ruth was wrong. There was destined to be a slip 'twixt the cup and her sweet lip just then, for that same evening Captain Bream received a telegram from London, which induced him to leave Yarmouth hastily to see a friend, he said, and keep an old-standing engagement. He promised, however, to be back in two or three days at furthest.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN.


A CLOUD COMES OVER RUTH'S HOPES, AND DIMS THEIR BRIGHTNESS.

To prevent the reader supposing that there is any deep-laid scheme or profound mystery, with which we mean to torment him during the course of our tale, we may as well say at once that the little plot, which Ruth had in view, and which began to grow quite into a romance the longer she pondered it, was neither more nor less than to bring Captain Bream and Mrs David Bright face to face.

Ruth had what we may style a constructive mind. Give her a few rough materials, and straight-way she would build a castle with them. If she had not enough of material, she immediately invented more, and thus continued her castle-building. Being highly imaginative and romantic, her structures were sometimes amazing edifices, at which orthodox architects might have turned up their noses--and with some reason, too, for poor little Ruth's castles were built frequently on bad foundations, and sometimes even in the air, so that they too often fell in splendid ruins at her feet!

It would not be just however, to say that none of Ruth's buildings stood firm. Occasionally she built upon a good foundation. Now and then she made a straight shot and hit the mark. For instance, the little edifice of cuffs and comforters to the North Sea trawlers survived, and remains to the present day a monument of usefulness, (which few monuments are), and of well-placed philanthropy. It may not, perhaps, be just to say that Ruth actually laid the foundation--conceived the first idea--of that good work, but she was at all events among the first builders, became an active overseer, and did much of the work with her own hands. Still, as we have said, too many of Ruth's castles came to the ground, and the poor thing was so well used to the sight of falling material that she had at last begun to be quite expert in detecting the first symptoms of dissolution, and often regarded them with despairing anxiety. It was so with her when Captain Bream was summoned so suddenly away from Yarmouth.

Eagerly, anxiously, had she planned to get him down to that town for the purpose of confronting him with Mrs David Bright--the reason being that, from various things the captain had said to her at different times, and from various remarks that Mrs Bright had made on sundry occasions, she felt convinced that the North Sea fisherman's wife was none other than Captain Bream's long-lost sister!

It would be well-nigh impossible, as well as useless, to investigate the process of reasoning and the chain of investigation, by which she came to this conclusion, but having once laid the foundation, she began to build on it with her wonted enthusiasm, and with a hopefulness that partial failure could not destroy.

The captain's departure, just when she hoped to put the copestone on her little edifice was a severe blow, for it compelled her to shut up her hopes and fears in her own breast, and, being of a sympathetic nature, that was difficult. But Ruth was a wise little woman as well as sympathetic. She had sense enough to know that it might be a tremendous disappointment to Captain Bream, if, after having had his hopes raised, it were discovered that Mrs Bright was _not_ his sister. Ruth had therefore made up her mind not to give the slightest hint to him, or to any one else, about her hopes, until the matter could be settled by bringing the two together, when, of course, they would at once recognise each other.

Although damped somewhat by this unlooked-for interruption to her little schemes, she did not allow her efforts to flag.

"I see," she said one day, on entering the theological library, where Jessie, having laid down a worsted cuff which she had been knitting, was deep in Leslie's _Short and Easy method with the Deists_, and Kate, having dropped a worsted comforter, had lost herself in Chalmers's _Astronomical Discourses_. "I see you are both busy, so I won't disturb you. I only looked in to say that I'm going out for an hour or two."

"We are never too busy, darling," said Jessie, "to count _your_ visits an interruption. Would you like us to walk with you?"

"N-no. Not just now. The fact is, I am going out on a little private expedition," said Ruth, pursing her mouth till it resembled a cherry.

"Oh! about that little plot?" asked Jessie, laughing. Ruth nodded and joined in the laugh, but would not commit herself in words.

"Now, don't work too hard, Kate," she cried with an arch look as she turned to leave.

"It is harder work than you suppose, Miss Impudence," said Kate; "what with cuffs and contradictions, comforters and confusion, worsted helmets and worse theology, my brain seems to be getting into what the captain calls a sort of semi-theological lop-scowse that quite unfits me for anything. Go away, you naughty girl, and carry out your dark plots, whatever they are."

Ruth ran off laughing, and soon found herself at the door of Mrs Bright's humble dwelling.

Now, Mrs Bright, although very fond of her fair young visitor, had begun, as we have seen, to grow rather puzzled and suspicious as to her frequent inquiries into her past history.

"You told me, I think, that your maiden name was Bream," said Ruth, after a few remarks about the weather and the prospects of the _Short Blue_ fleet, etcetera.

"Yes, Miss Ruth," answered Mrs Bright; but the answer was so short and her tone so peculiar that poor scheming little Ruth was quelled at once. She did not even dare to say another word on the subject nearest her heart at the time, and hastily, if not awkwardly, changed the subject to little Billy.

Here indeed she had touched a theme in regard to which Mrs Bright was always ready to respond.

"Ah! he _is_ a good boy, is Billy," she said, "an uncommonly good boy-- though he is not perfect by any means. And he's a little too fond of fighting. But, after all, it's not for its own sake he likes it, dear boy! It's only when there's a good reason for it that he takes to it. Did I ever tell you about his kicking a boy bigger than himself into the sea off the end of the pier?"

"No, you never told me that."

"Well, this is how it was. There's a small girl named Lilly Brass--a sweet little tot of four years old or thereabouts, and Billy's very fond of her. Lilly has a brother named Tommy, who's as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat, and he has a trick of getting on the edge of the pier, near where they live, and tryin' to walk on it and encouraging Lilly to follow him. The boy had been often warned not to do it, but he didn't mind, and my Billy grew very angry about it.

"`I don't care about little Brass himself mother,' said Billy to me one day; `he may tumble in an' be drownded if he likes, but I'm afeared for little Lilly, for she likes to do what he does.'

"So, one day Billy saw Tommy Brass at his old tricks, with Lilly looking on, quite delighted, and what did my boy do, think ye? He went up to Brass, who was bigger and older than himself, and gave him such a hearty kick that it sent him right off into the sea. The poor boy could not swim a stroke, and the water was deep, so my Billy, who can swim like a fish, jumped in after him and helped to get him safe ashore. Tommy Brass was none the worse; so, after wringing the water out of his clothes, he went up to Billy and gave him a slap in the face. Billy is not a boastful boy. He does not speak much when he's roused; but he pulled off his coat and gave Brass such a thump on the nose that he knocked him flat on the sand. Up he jumped, however, in a moment and went at Billy furiously, but he had no chance. My boy was too active for him. He jumped a' one side, struck out his leg, and let him tumble over it, giving him a punch on the head as he went past that helped to send his nose deeper into the sand. At last he beat him entirely, and then, as he was puttin' on his jacket again, he said--`Tommy Brass, it ain't so much on account o' that slap you gave me, that I've licked you, but because you 'ticed Lilly into danger. And, you mark what I say: every time I catch you walkin' on that there pier-edge, or _hear_ of you doin' of it, I'll give you a lickin'.'

"Tommy Brass has never walked on that pier-edge since," concluded Mrs Bright, "but I'm sorry to say that ever since that day Lilly Brass has refused to have a word to say to Billy, and when asked why, she says, `'cause he sowsed an' whacked my brudder Tommy!'"

Thus did Mrs Bright entertain her visitor with comment and anecdote about Billy until she felt at last constrained to leave without having recovered courage to broach again the subject which had brought her to the fisherman's home.

That same afternoon Mrs Bright paid a friendly visit to the wife of her husband's mate.

"I can't think whatever Miss Ruth Dotropy is so curious about me for, she's bin at me again," said Mrs Bright to Mrs Davidson, who was busy with her needle on some part of the costume of her "blessed babby," which lay, like an angel, in its little crib behind the door.

"P'r'aps it's all along of her bein' so interested in you," replied pretty Mrs Davidson. "She asks me many odd questions at times about myself, and my dear Joe, and the babby--though I admit she don't inquire much about my past life."

"Well, that's not surprising," said