Young Tom Bowling | Page 5

you goes on to make sich a favour on it, sir, we'll see about it, sir."
"See about it?--Stuff and nonsense, Bowling, my man, that won't do for me!" exclaimed the other, as, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder as he crossed the thwarts, he stepped out of the wherry on to the landing- stage. "I tell you what it is, young Tom must go to sea, my man--aye, and to-morrow too!"
"Lor' sakes, you're just the same, sir, as you were aboard the old Blazer twenty years ago!" said father, breaking into a regular horse- laugh, which he never did except something particularly funny tickled his fancy. "You allers gave your orders sharp as a youngster, and some of us used for to call you `Commander Jack' sometimes. Lor', I remembers it all as if it wer' but yesterday!"
"All right, Bowling, I'm glad your memory is so good," replied Captain Mordaunt, standing on the pontoon and looking down at us, with a smile on his cheery, handsome face. "You will remember, too, that my word was always as good as any bond, and when I say a thing I mean a thing! I'm stopping for a day or two at the Keppel's Head, and if you'll come over there this evening after dinner, or send young Tom, should you like that better than a glass of grog, why, I will give you a letter for him to take on board the Saint Vincent to the commander, who's an old friend of mine like yourself, and we'll have young Tom entered on the books of the training-ship in a brace of shakes!"
"Thank you kindly, sir," said father, raising his hand to his cap again in salute as the captain turned to leave us. "You're very good, sir, for to h'interest yourself, sir, in this yere young scamp of a son o' mine, sir!"
"Not a bit of it, Bowling, not a bit of it," rejoined the other cheerily, as he chucked father a sovereign for his fare ashore, and told him to be sure to come up to the Keppel's Head on the Hard and see him in the evening for the letter of introduction for me. "It's a shame that such a likely young fellow should not be allowed to follow in his father's footsteps and turn out as brave and handy a sailor as himself. He's a born seaman, every inch of him, Bowling, and a regular chip of the old block!"
CHAPTER TWO.
"A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK!"
"Oh!" exclaimed mother, when an hour or so later father set about explaining the matter of our meeting Captain Mordaunt, and his promise of sending me aboard the Saint Vincent to be trained for the service. "You just go and tell that to the marines! Don't you try on any of your old yarns with me!"
"I ain't a-tryin' on nothing, old woman," protested father, after a vain attempt to continue his dinner, bolting a piece of potato, which stuck in his throat and set him coughing. "I'm a-tellin' you the honest truth, Sarah, that I be!"
"Well, and suppose it is true," retorted mother, giving him a slap on the back to send the obstructive potato down, "p'raps you'll tell me, Tom Bowling, how Jenny and I are a-going to get along without young Tom? Who's going to look after the birds in the mornin's, I'd like to know-- with twelve dozen fresh canaries a-comin' from Norwich the day arter to- morrow, too?"
"Oh, we'll manage all right, mother," put in my sister Jenny, with a merry laugh. "You'll make Tom conceited if you let him think we cannot get along without him!"
She was a bright, fairy-like little creature, with beautiful hazel eyes, and a wealth of brown hair on her tiny head that was a veritable crown of glory, reaching below her waist, and looking like a tangle of gold when the sun played upon it; and, somehow or other, she was the life and light of our home, always having a kind word for everybody, and ever acting as the peacemaker when any little difference arose between father and mother, as sometimes happens in most family circles.
Father and I when out together in the wherry, talking over home matters, would often wonder where Jenny could have come from, she was so different to all of us; mother being a big stout woman, with dark hair and eyes; while father `belonged to Pharaoh's lean kine,' as the country folks say, being tall, and thin, and wiry, with as little flesh on his bones as a scaffolding pole. In this respect, I may add, he was said to resemble all the Bowlings ever mentioned in history, up to the time of our remote ancestor, the celebrated Tom Bowling of Dibdin's song, who `went aloft' more