Held Fast For England Part 12

At that hour Bob appeared, alone.

"Uncle won't come round till one o'clock, Carrie. He said he should take a quiet stroll round, by himself, and look at the s.h.i.+ps; and that, no doubt, we should like to have a talk together."

"Is he very cross with you, Bob?" she asked, anxiously. "You know he really is kind at heart, very kind; but I am afraid he must be very hard, as a master."

"Not a bit, Carrie. I expected he was going to be so, but he isn't the least like that. He is very much liked by everyone there. He doesn't say much, and he certainly looks stiff and grim enough for anything; but he isn't so, really, not a bit."

"Didn't he scold you dreadfully about your upsetting those twelve bottles of wine?"

"He never said a word about it, and I did not know at the time he had seen me. John, the foreman--the one who used to take me out in the holidays--would not have said anything about it. He said, of course accidents did happen, sometimes, with the boys; and when they did, he himself blew them up, and there was no occasion to mention it to Mr. Bale, when it wasn't anything very serious. But of course, I could not have that; and said that either he must tell uncle, or I should.

"It really happened because my fingers were so cold I could not feel the bottle. Of course the cellar is not cold, but I had been outside, taking in a waggon load of bottles that had just arrived, and counting them, and my fingers got regularly numbed.

"So John went to the counting house, and told him about the wine being spilt. He said I wished him to tell him, and how it had happened."

"What did uncle say, Bob?"

"He said he was glad to hear that I told John to tell him; but that he knew it already, for he had just come down to the cellar when the bottles went over and, as he didn't wish to interfere with the foreman's work, had come back to the counting house without anyone noticing he had been there. He said, of course boys could not be trusted like men; and that, as he had chosen to put me there, he must put up with accidents. He never spoke about it to me, till last night."

"Well, he seemed very vexed about it, Bob, and made a great deal of it."

"He didn't mean it, Carrie; and he knew I knew he didn't mean it.

He knows I am beginning to understand him."

That evening, Mr. Bale sent Bob back to the hotel by himself.

"I thought I would get him out of the way," he said, when Bob had left. "I wanted to have a chat with you about him.

"You see, Carrie, I acted hastily in taking him away from school; but it seemed to me that he must be getting into a very bad groove, to be playing such pranks as breaking out in the middle of the night. I was sorry, afterwards; partly because it had upset all my plans, partly because I was not sure that I had done the best thing by him.

"I had intended that he should have stopped for another year, at school; by that time he would be between sixteen and seventeen, and I thought of taking him into the office for six months or so, to begin with, for him to learn a little of the routine. Then I had intended to send him out to Oporto, for two years, and then to Cadiz for two years; so that he would have learnt Portuguese and Spanish well, got up all there was to learn about the different growths, and established friendly relations with my agents.

"Now, as it happens, all these plans have been upset. My agent at Oporto died, a month ago. His son succeeds him. He is a young man, and not yet married. In the first place, I don't suppose he would care about being bothered with Bob; and in the second place, boys of Bob's age are not likely to submit very quietly to the authority of a foreigner. Then, too, your brother is full of mischief and fun; and I don't suppose foreigners would understand him, in the least, and he would get into all manner of sc.r.a.pes.

"My correspondent at Cadiz is an elderly man, without a family, and the same objection would arise in his case; and moreover, from what I hear from him and from other Spanish sources, there is a strong feeling against England in Spain and, now that we are at war with France, and have troubles in America, I think it likely enough they will join in against us. Of course my correspondent writes cautiously, but in his last letter he strongly advises me to buy largely, at once, as there is no saying about the future; and several of my friends in the trade have received similar advice.

"I have put the boy into the cellar for, at the moment, I could see nothing else to do with him. But really, the routine he is learning is of little importance, and there is no occasion for him to learn to do these things himself. He would pick up all he wants to know there, when he came back, in a very short time."

"Then what are you thinking of doing, uncle?" Carrie asked, after a pause, as she saw that Mr. Bale expected her to say something.

"It seems to me that a way has opened out of the difficulty. I don't want him to go back to school again. He knows quite as much Latin as is required, in an importer of wines. I want him to learn Spanish and Portuguese, and to become a gentleman, and a man of the world. I have stuck to Philpot Lane, all my life; but there is no reason why he should do so, after me. Things are changing in the city, and many of our merchants no longer live there, but have houses in the country, and drive or ride to them. Some people shake their heads over what they call newfangled notions. I think it is good for a man to get right away from his business, when he has done work.

"But this is not the point. Bob is too young to begin to learn the business abroad. Two years too young, at least. But there is no reason why he should not begin to learn Spanish. Now, I thought if I could find someone I could intrust him to, where his home would be bright and pleasant, he might go there for a couple of years.

Naturally I should be prepared to pay a fair sum--say 200 pounds a year--for him, for of course no one is going to be bothered with a boy, without being paid for it."

Carrie listened for something further to come. Then her husband broke in:

"I see what you are driving at, Mr. Bale, and Carrie and myself would be delighted to have him.

"Don't you see, Carrie? Your uncle means that Bob shall stop with us, and learn the language there."

"That would be delightful!" Carrie exclaimed, enthusiastically. "Do you really mean that, uncle?"

"That is really what I do mean, niece. It seems to me that that is the very best thing we could do with the young scamp."

"It would be capital!" Carrie went on. "It is what I should like above everything."

"A nicer arrangement couldn't be, Mr. Bale. It will suit us all.

Bob will learn the language, he will be a companion to Carrie when I am on duty, and we will make a man of him. But he won't be able to go out with us, I am afraid. Officers' wives and families get their pa.s.sages in the transports, but I am afraid it would be no use to ask for one for Bob. Besides, we sail in four days."

"No, I will arrange about his pa.s.sage, and so on.

"Well, I am glad that my proposal suits you both. The matter has been worrying me for the last three months, and it is a comfort that it is off my mind.

"I will go back to my hotel now. I will send Bob round in the morning, and you can tell him about it."

Chapter 4: Preparations For A Voyage.

Bob went round to the barracks at half past nine.

"Uncle says you have a piece of news to tell me, Carrie."

"My dear Bob," Captain O'Halloran said, "your uncle is a broth of a boy. He would do credit to Galway; and if anyone says anything to the contrary, I will have him out tomorrow morning."

"What has he been doing?" Bob asked.

"I told you, Carrie, yesterday, he wasn't a bit like what he seemed."

"Well, Bob, you are not going to stay at his place of business any longer."

"No! Where is he going to send me--to school again? I am not sure I should like that, Carrie. I didn't want to leave, but I don't think I should like to go back to Caesar, and Euclid, and all those wretched old books again."

"Well, you are not going, Bob."

"Hurry up, Carrie!" her husband said. "Don't you see that you are keeping the boy on thorns? Tell him the news, without beating about the bush."

"Well, it is just this, Bob. You are to come out for two years to live with us, at Gibraltar, and learn Spanish."

Bob threw his cap up to the ceiling, with a shout of delight; executed a wild dance, rushed at his sister and kissed her violently, and shook hands with her husband.

"That is glorious!" he said, when he had sufficiently recovered himself for speech. "I said uncle was a brick, didn't I? But I never dreamt of such a thing as this."

"He is going to pay, very handsomely, while you are with us, Bob, so it will be really a great help to us. Besides, we will like to have you with us. But you will have to work hard at Spanish, you know."

"Oh, I will work hard," Bob said, confidently.