A Sailors Lass | Page 5

when they were old enough. It had been a startling revelation to Bob to hear his father speak as he had done on the beach at Fellness about his brother, for he had long ago decided that his father did not care a pin for any of them, unless it was for the baby sister who had died, and even of that he was not quite sure. He had made up his mind, as he walked through the storm that morning, that he would not go back again, but make his way to Grimsby, or some other seaport town, after his business at Fellness was done. But what he had heard on the beach from his father somewhat shook his purpose, and when he learned from Dame Peters afterwards, that the child they had rescued was to share their home, he thought he would go back again, and try to bear the hard life a little longer, if it was only to help his mother, and tell her his father did care for them a bit in spite of his stern, hard ways.
Perhaps Mrs. Coomber did not need to be told that her husband loved her and his children; at all events, she received Bob's information with a nod and a smile, and a whispered word. "Yer father's all right, and a rare good fisherman," she said; for in spite of the frequent unkindness she experienced, Mrs. Coomber was very fond of her husband.
"Ah, he's a good fisherman, but he'd be all the better if he didn't have so much of that bottle," grumbled Bob; "he thinks a deal more about that than he does about us."
It was true enough what Bob said. If his father could not by any chance get his bottle replenished, wife and children had a little respite from their usual hard, driving life, and he was more civil to their only neighbours, who were at the farm about half a mile off; but once the bottle got filled again, he grew sullen and morose, or quarrelsome. He had recently made himself very disagreeable to Farmer Hayes in one of his irritable fits, a fact which suddenly recurred to his wife when she heard of the sick child being brought home to her to nurse, but she dared not mention it to her husband. When Coomber brought the child that afternoon, he said, gaily: "Here's a present for yer from the sea, mother; maybe she'll bring us good luck coming as she did."
"It 'ud be better luck if we'd picked up a boat," muttered Bob, who was standing near.
"Why, she ain't such a baby as you said," exclaimed Mrs. Coomber, as she unpinned the shawl in which she was wrapped; "she is about five."
"Five years old," repeated Coomber; "but she'd talk if she was as old as that, and Dame Peters told me she'd just laid like a dead thing ever since she'd been there."
"She's ill, that's what it is, poor little mite--ill and frightened out of her senses;" and Mrs. Coomber gathered her in her arms, and kissed the little white lips, and pressed her to her bosom, as only a tender mother can, while the boys stood round in wondering silence, and Coomber dashed a tear from his eye as he thought of the little daughter lying in Fellness churchyard. But he was ashamed of the love that prompted this feeling, and said hastily: "Now, mother, we mustn't begin by spoiling her;" but then he turned away, and called Bob to go with him and look after the boat.
For several days the child continued very ill--too ill to notice anything, or to attempt to talk; but one day, when she was lying on Mrs. Coomber's lap before the fire, the boys mutely looking at her as she lay, she suddenly put up her little hands, and said in a feeble whisper, "Dear faver Dod, tate tare o' daddy and mammy, and Tiny;" and then she seemed to drop off into a doze.
The boys were startled, and Mrs. Coomber looked down hastily at the little form on her lap, for this was the first intimation they had had that the child could talk, although Mrs. Coomber fancied that she had showed some signs of recognising her during the previous day.
"I say, did you hear that?" whispered Dick. "Was she saying her prayers, mother, like Harry Hayes does?"
Mrs. Coomber nodded, while she looked down into the child's face and moved her gently to and fro to soothe her to sleep.
"But, mother, ought she to say that? Did you hear her? She said 'dear God,'" said Dick, creeping round to his mother's side.
Mrs. Coomber was puzzled herself at the child's words. They had awakened in her a far-off memory of days when she was a girl, and