Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn, R. M. Ballantyne [free e novels .TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
Book online «Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn, R. M. Ballantyne [free e novels .TXT] 📗». Author R. M. Ballantyne
“The preparations,” said Mrs Gaff, as she searched her pocket for the key of the box, “will depend on what I’m able to afford.”
“You’ll be able to afford a good deal, then, if all that’s reported be true, for I’m told ye’ve got ten thousand pounds.”
“Is that the sum?” asked Mrs Gaff, still searching for the key, which, like all other keys in like circumstances, seemed to have gone in for a game of hide-and-seek; “I’m sure I ought to know, for the lawyer took great pains to teach me that; ay, there ye are,” (to the key); “found ye at last. Now then, Haco, we’ll have a look at the book and see.”
To Tottie’s surprise and no small disappointment, the only object that came out of the mysterious tea-caddy was a small book, which Mrs Gaff, however, seemed to look upon with respect, and to handle as if she half-expected it would bite.
“There, that’s my banker’s book. You read off the figures, Haco, for I can’t. To be sure if I had wanted to know, Tottie could have told me, but I haven’t had the heart to look at it till to-day.”
“Ten thousand, an’ no mistake!” said Haco, looking at the figures with intense gravity.
“Now, then, the question is,” said Mrs Gaff, sitting down and again seizing Tottie’s head for stroking purposes, while she put the question with deep solemnity—“the question is, how long will that last?”
Haco was a good deal puzzled. He bit his thumb nail, and knit his shaggy brows for some time, and then said—
“Well, you know, that depends on how much you spend at a time. If you go for to spend a thousand pounds a day, now, it’ll just last ten days. If you spend a thousand pounds a year, it’ll last ten years. If you spend a thousand pounds in ten years, it’ll last a hundred years—d’ye see? It all depends on the spendin’. But, then, Mrs Gaff,” said the skipper remonstratively, “you mustn’t go for to live on the principal, you know.”
“What’s the principal?” demanded Mrs Gaff.
“Why, the whole sum; the money itself, you know.”
“D’ye suppose that I’m a born fool, Mr Barepoles, that I should try to live on the money itself? I never heerd on anybody bilin’ up money in a kettle an’ suppin’ goold soup, and I’m not a-goin’ for to try.”
With infinite difficulty, and much futile effort at illustration, did Haco explain to Mrs Gaff the difference between principal and interest; telling her to live on the latter, and never on any account to touch the former, unless she wished to “end her days in a work’us.”
“I wonder what it’s like,” said Mrs Gaff.
“What what’s like?” inquired the skipper.
“Ten thousand pounds.”
“Well, that depends too, you know, on what it’s made of—whether copper, silver, goold, or paper.”
“What! is it ever made o’ paper?”
In attempting to explain this point, Haco became unintelligible even to himself, and Mrs Gaff became wildly confused.
“Well, well,” said the latter, “never mind; but try to tell me how much I’ll have a year.”
“That depends too—”
“Everything seems to depend,” cried Mrs Gaff somewhat testily.
“Of course it does,” said Haco, “everything does depend on somethin’ else, and everything will go on dependin’ to the end of time: it depends on how you invest it, and what interest ye git for it.”
“Oh, dearie me!” sighed Mrs Gaff, beginning for the first time to realise in a small degree the anxieties and troubles inseparable from wealth; “can’t ye tell me what it’s likely to be about?”
“Couldn’t say,” observed Haco, drawing out his pipe as if he were about to appeal to it for information; “it’s too deep for me.”
“Well, but,” pursued Mrs Gaff, becoming confidential, “tell me now, d’ye think it would be enough to let me make some grand improvements on the cottage against Stephen and Billy’s return?”
“Why, that depends on what the improvements is to be,” returned Haco with a profound look.
“Ay, just so. Well, here are some on ’em. First of all, I wants to get a noo grate an’ a brass tea-kettle. There’s nothing like a cheery fire of a cold night, and my Stephen liked a cheery fire—an’ so did Billy for the matter o’ that; but the trouble I had wi’ that there grate is past belief. Now, a noo grate’s indispens’ble.”
“Well?” said Haco, puffing his smoke up the chimney, and regarding the woman earnestly.
“Well; then I want to get a noo clock. That one in the corner is a perfit fright. A noo table, too, for the leg o’ that one has bin mended so often that it won’t never stand another splice. Then a noo tea-pot an’ a fender and fire-irons would be a comfort. But my great wish is to get a big mahogany four-post bed with curtains. Stephen says he never did sleep in a four-poster, and often wondered what it would be like—no more did I, so I would like to take him by surprise, you see. Then I want to git—”
“Well?” said Haco, when she paused.
“I’m awful keen to git a carpit, but I doubt I’m thinkin’ o’ too many things. D’ye think the first year’s—what d’ye call it?”
“Interest,” said Haco.
“Ay, interest—would pay for all that?”
“Yes, an’ more,” said the skipper confidently.
“If I only knew how much it is to be,” said Mrs Gaff thoughtfully.
At that moment the door opened, and Kenneth Stuart entered, followed by his friend Gildart Bingley. After inquiring as to her welfare Kenneth said:
“I’ve come to pay you the monthly sum which is allowed you by the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society. Mr Bingley asked me to call as he could not do so; but from all accounts I believe you won’t need it. May I congratulate you on your good fortune, Mrs Gaff.”
Kenneth took out his purse as he spoke to pay the sum due to her.
Mrs Gaff seemed to be struck with a sudden thought. She thanked Kenneth for his congratulations, and then said:
“As to my not needin’ the money you’ve brought me, young man, I take leave to say that I do need it; so you’ll obleege me by handin’ it over.”
Kenneth obeyed in surprise not unmingled with disappointment in finding such a grasping spirit in one whom he had hitherto thought well of. He paid the money, however, in silence, and was about to take his leave when Mrs Gaff stopped him.
“This sum has bin paid to me riglarly for the last three months.”
“I believe it has,” said Kenneth.
“And,” continued Mrs Gaff, “it’s been the means o’ keepin’ me and my Tottie from starvation.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” returned Kenneth, who began to wonder what was to follow; but he was left to wonder, for Mrs Gaff abruptly asked him and Gildart to be seated, as she was anxious to find out a fact or two in regard to principal and interest.
Gildart could scarce avoid laughing as he glanced at his companion.
“Now,” began Mrs Gaff, seating herself opposite Kenneth, with a hand on each knee, “I wants to know what a principal of ten thousand pounds comes to in the way of interest in a twel’month.”
“Well, Mrs Gaff,” said Kenneth, “that depends—”
“Dear me!” cried Mrs Gaff petulantly, “every mortial thing that has to do with money seeps to depend. Could ye not tell me somethin’ about it, now, that doesn’t depend?”
“Not easily,” replied Kenneth with a laugh; “but I was going to say that if you get it invested at five per cent, that would give you an income of five hundred pounds a year.”
“How much?” inquired Mrs Gaff in a high key, while her eyes widened with astonishment.
Kenneth repeated the sum.
“Young man, you’re jokin’.”
“Indeed I am not,” said Kenneth earnestly, with an appealing glance at Gildart.
“True—as Johnson’s Dictionary,” said the middy. Mrs Gaff spent a few moments in silent and solemn reflection.
“The Independent clergyman,” she said in a low meditative tone, “has only two hundred a year—so I’m told; an’ the doctor at the west end has got four hundred, and he keeps a fine house an’ servants; an’ Sam Balls, the rich hosier, has got six hundred—so they say; and Mrs Gaff, the poor critter, has only got five hundred! That’ll do,” she continued, with a sudden burst of animation, “shake out the reefs in yer tops’ls, lass, slack off yer sheets, ease the helm, an’ make the most on it while the fair wind lasts.”
Having thus spoken, Mrs Gaff hastily folded up in a napkin the sum just given her, and put it, along with the bank-book, into the tea-caddy, which she locked and deposited safely in the corner cupboard. Immediately after, her visitors, much surprised at her eccentric conduct, rose and took their leave.
Soon after the conversation narrated in the last chapter, the clerks in the bank of Wreckumoft were not a little interested by the entrance of a portly woman of comely appearance and large proportions. She was dressed in a gaudy cotton gown and an enormously large bonnet, which fluttered a good deal, owing as much to its own magnitude and instability as to the quantity of pink ribbons and bows wherewith it was adorned.
The woman led by the hand a very pretty little girl, whose dress was much the same in pattern, though smaller in proportion. Both woman and child looked about them with that air of uncertainty peculiar to females of the lower order when placed in circumstances in which they know not exactly how to act.
Taking pity upon them, a clerk left his perch, and going forward, asked the woman what she wanted.
To this she replied promptly, that she wanted money.
She was much flushed and very warm, and appeared to have come some distance on foot, as well as to be in a state of considerable agitation, which, however, she determinedly subdued by the force of a strong will.
“If you go to yonder rail and present your cheque,” replied the clerk kindly, “you’ll get the money.”
“Present what, young man?”
“Your cheque,” replied the clerk.
“What’s that?”
“Have you not a cheque-book—or a slip of paper to—”
“Oh! ay, a book. Of course I’ve got a book, young man.”
Saying this, Mrs Gaff, (for it was she), produced from a huge bag the bank-book that had erstwhile reposed in the mysterious tea-caddy.
“Have you no other book than this?”
“No, young man,” replied Mrs Gaff, feeling, but not exhibiting, slight alarm.
The clerk, after glancing at the book, and with some curiosity at its owner, then explained that a cheque-book was desirable, although not absolutely necessary, and went and got one, and showed her the use of it,—how the sum to be drawn should be entered with the date, etcetera, on the margin in figures, and then the cheque itself drawn out in words, “not in figures,” and signed; after which he advised Mrs Gaff to draw out a cheque on the spot for what she wanted.
“But, young man,” said Mrs Gaff, who had listened to it all with an expression of imbecility on her good-looking face, “I never wrote a stroke in my life ’xcept once, when I tried to show my Billy how to do it, and only made a big blot on his copy, for which I gave him a slap on the face, poor ill-used boy.”
“Well, then, tell me how much you want, and I will write it out for you,” said the clerk, sitting down at a table and taking up a pen.
Mrs Gaff pondered for a few seconds, then she drew Tottie aside and carried on an earnest and animated conversation with her in hoarse whispers, accompanied by much nodding and quivering of both bonnets, leading to the conclusion that what the one propounded the other heartily agreed to.
Returning to the table, Mrs Gaff said that she wanted a hundred pounds.
“How much?” demanded the clerk in surprise.
“A hundred pound, young man,” repeated Mrs Gaff, somewhat sternly, for
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