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The skipper therefore summoned Mr Macdougall to a consultation, at which I also was allowed to be present, for our sad plight had united us all together on the most brotherly terms, if I may so speak of the relations both the mate and Captain Billings bore towards me although the skipper had always remembered Sam Pengelly's exhortation on parting with me when he left me in his charge, to "remember the b'y!"
Thereupon, Jane giving me a final hug, my chest was bundled below in a brace of shakes, and Sam and I, accompanied by the man wheeling the truck, were on our way down the Stoke Road towards Plymouth a lingering glance which I cast behind, in order to give a farewell wave of the hand to my second mother, imprinting on my memory every detail of the little cottage, with its clematis-covered porch, and the bright scarlet geraniums and fuchsias in full bloom in front, and Jane Pengelly's tearful face standing out amidst the flowers, crying out a last loving "good-bye!"
I was, it is true, only sixteen at the time; but, being a sturdy, broad- shouldered chap, I looked all two years older; and I really do not think the skipper complimented me too strongly when he said I was worth a couple of hands on a yard, for, during my experience in the coal brig under Jorrocks' tuition, I had acquired considerable proficiency and dexterity in most of a seaman's functions, which aptitude I had further improved while sailing in Sam Pengelly's schooner between the various ports between Plymouth and the Land's End for two years nearly at a stretch afterwards.
Miss Oliver produced two copper coins, and laid them in his palm. As the exchange was made he backed upon Mrs Pengelly's shop door, and the impact set a bell clanging. The sense of it shot up his spine of a sudden, and at each stroke of the clapper he felt he had sold his soul to the devil.
For I take shame to own it, Mr Nanjivell, but at sight o' that boundless gold Satan whispered in the poor mite's ear, an' he started priggin'. . . . The way we found it out was, he came home from Mrs Pengelly's stinkin' o' peppermints: an' when we nosed him an' asked how he came to be favoured so, all he could say on the ground hop was that he'd met a shinin' Angel unexpected in Cobb's Ally: an' the Angel had stopped him and pulled out a purse an' said, 'Alcibiades Penhaligon, the Lord has been much interested of late in your goin's-out an' your comin's-in, an' what a good boy you've a-been.
I did not laugh at this, as Sam did; I only thought of the great affection, which, so undeserved by me, I had drawn from Jane Pengelly's great heart! Presently, we came in sight of the cottage.
But somehow the feel of the coin in his hand seemed to enfranchise him. He had at once a sense of manly solidity, and of having been floated off into a giddy atmosphere in which nothing succeeded like success and the law of gravity had lost all spanking weight. He backed towards Mrs Pengelly's shop door, greedy, suspicious, irresolute.
I got there early in the morning; and, being acquainted with Sam Pengelly's every-day practice, I knew exactly where to come across him, that is, unless he should happen to be ill; for every morning except Sunday, when he always went to church, unless he chanced to be on board his little foretopsail schooner, which was not likely at this time of the year he was invariably to be found on the Hoe, seated on one of the benches in front of Esplanade Terrace, looking over at the vessels out in the Sound, below and beyond.
"Well, my little man!" said Miss Oliver. "And what might you be doing here, all by yourself?" "Choosin'," answered 'Biades. Reluctantly he withdrew his eyes again from gloating on Mrs Pengelly's miscellaneous exhibits. "I 'spect it'll end in peppermint lumps, but I'd rather have trousers if a whole penny would run to 'em."
That same afternoon as Miss Charity Oliver came down the hill on her first errand as Relief Visitor, at the corner by Mrs Pengelly's she happened on young 'Biades, posted solitary before the shop-window.
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