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Recollecting that he had witnessed evidences of a friendly relation subsisting between Alice and Bumpus, Toozle straightway sought to pour the overflowing love and sorrow of his large little heart into the bosom of that supposed pirate. His advances were well received, and from that hour he followed the seaman like his shadow.
"Ah, my boy!" said Bumpus, becoming suddenly very grave, "you've no notion, how near it was all up with me. Why, you won't believe it, I was all but scragged." "Dear me! what is scragged?" inquired Alice. "You don't mean to say you don't know!" exclaimed Bumpus. "No, indeed, I don't." "Why, it means being hanged.
It pleased him, too, to be taken for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in vain; that strange young ladies to whom, despite his infatuation for the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent would mistake him for an undergraduate of Harvard, an imposition concerning which he had no scruples.
Bumpus, however, put his foot down flatly against having anything to do with such an "idiotic proceeding," as he chose to term it. "Huh!" he remarked, disdainfully; "all very fine for you fellows, looking so grand up in your leafy bowers, like a flock of queer parrots; but what about poor me, pinned there on the ground by that pesky old tent, that wouldn't let me back in?
Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all traces of worry had disappeared. The future would take care of itself. For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious meal.
"Whew! then I hope he ain't fetched a message that'll spoil all our fun, just when we've got to the last leg of the journey, with the boat only a few miles further on! That'd be the limit Bumpus. You don't know anything about it, I reckon?"
The seaman followed the boy obediently, and in a few minutes stood beside Alice. Corrie had expected to find her there, but he had not counted on meeting with Poopy and Jo Bumpus. "Hallo, Grampus! is that you?" "Wot! Corrie, my boy, is it yourself? Give us your flipper, small though it be. I didn't think I'd niver see ye agin, lad." "No more did I, Grampus; it was very nearly all up with us."
That's the form his remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society.
Janet had escaped. "Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," Ditmar informed him. "She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going through the mill with young Caldwell." Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. "Oh, she went through, did she?"
"No, not so easily as any other mark," retorted Dan; "for it's made with a kind of ink that's not sold in shops. Everything goes to prove that the letter is no forgery. But, Mr. Burke, will you answer me this. A perfect storm of cheers and applause followed this last sentence, in the midst of which there were cries of "You're floored, Burke! Hurrah for Bumpus! Cut the ropes!"
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