The Coxswain's Bride, Robert Michael Ballantyne [7 ebook reader TXT] 📗

apparently enchained by an insignificant piece of needlework? Can that be Nellie Grove, whom we last saw with her eyes shut and her mouth open--howling? Yes, it is she, and--but let Mrs Matterby explain.

"Now, Jack," said that lady in a firm tone, "it's of no use your asking question after question of every one in this way, and not even waiting for answers, and everybody speaking at once--"

"Excuse me, dearest mother, Miss Nellie Grove has not yet spoken at all."

"_Miss_ Nellie, indeed! Times are changed,"--murmured Natty, with a look of surprise.

"Her not speaking proves her the wisest of us all," resumed the widow, looking at Old Nell, who with tremulous head nodded violent approval. You must know, old Nell had become as deaf as a post, and, being incapable of understanding anything, she gratified her natural amiability by approving of everything--at least everything that was uttered by speakers with a visible smile. When they spoke with gravity, old Nell shook her tremulous head, and put on a look of alarmingly solemn sympathy. On the present occasion, however, the antique old thing seemed to have been affected with some absolutely new, and evidently quaint, ideas, for she laughed frequently and immoderately, especially when she gazed hard at Jack Matterby after having looked long at Nellie Grove!

"Now, Jack," resumed the widow for the fiftieth time, "you must know that after I lost you, and had given you up for dead, I came back here, feeling an intense longing to see once more the old home, and I began a school. In course of years God sent me prosperity, notwithstanding the murmurings of rebellion which rose in my heart when I thought of _you_. The school became so big that I had to take a new house--that in which you now sit--and sought about for a teacher to help me. Long before that time poor Ned Grove had been drowned at sea. Your old friend Natty there had become the first mate to a merchantman, and helped to support his grandmother. Nellie, whose education I had begun, as you know, when you were a boy, had grown into a remarkably clever and pretty girl, as, no doubt, you will admit. She had become a daily governess in the family of a gentleman who had come to live in the neighbourhood. Thus she was enabled to assist her brother in keeping up the old home, and took care of granny."

At this point our hero, as he looked at the fair face and modest carriage of his old playmate heartily admitted, (to himself), that she was much more than "pretty," and felt that he now understood how a fisherman's daughter had, to his intense surprise, grown up with so much of gentle manners, and such soft lady-like hands. But he said never a word!

"Most happily for me," continued Mrs Matterby, "Nellie lost her situation at the time I speak of, owing to the death of her employer. Thus I had the chance of securing her at once. And now, here we have been together for some years, and I hope we may never part as long as we live. We had considerable difficulty in getting old Nell to quit the cottage and come here. Indeed, we should never have succeeded, I think, had it not been for Natty--"

"That's true," interrupted Nat, with a laugh.

"The dear old woman was too deaf to understand, and too obstinate to move: so one day I put the bed clothes over her head, gathered her and them up in my arms, and brought her up here bodily, very much as I carried _you_ ashore, Jack, in the life-buoy, without asking leave. And she has been content and happy ever since."

What more of this tale there is to tell shall be told, reader, by excerpts from our hero's Christmas letter to thin little Mrs Seaford, as follows:--

"Pardon my seeming neglect, dear old friend. I meant to have run up
to town to see you the instant I set foot in England, but you must
admit that my dear, long-lost mother had prior claims. Pardon, also,
my impudence in now asking you to come and see _me_. You _must_ come.
I will take no denial, for I want you to rejoice at my wedding! Yes,
as old Nell once said to me, `God sends us a blessing sometimes when
we least expect it.' He has not only restored to me my mother, but
has raised me from the lowest rung in the ladder to the very highest,
and given me the sweetest, and most--. But enough. Come and see for
yourself. Her name is Nellie. But I have more to astonish you with.
Not only do I take Nellie back with me to my home in the new world,
but I take my mother also, and Natty Grove, and _old Nell herself_!
How we got her to understand what we want her to do, could not be told
in less than four hundred pages of small type. Nat did it, by means
of signs, symbols, and what _he_ styles facial-logarithms. At all
events she has agreed to go, and we hope to set sail next June.
Moreover, I expect to get _you_ to join us. Don't laugh. I mean it.
There is good work to be done. Canada needs philanthropic Christians
as well as England.

"You will scarcely credit me when I say that I have become a
match-maker--not one of those `little' ones, in whose welfare you are
so much interested, but a real one. My deep design is upon your
partner, Natty Grove. Yes, your _partner_--for were not _you_ the
instrument used in rescuing my soul, and _he_ my body? so that you
have been partners in this double rescue. Well, it is my intention to
introduce Natty Grove to Nancy Briggs, and abide the result! Once on
a time I had meant her for Bob Snobbins, but as you have failed to
hunt him up, he must be left to suffer the consequences. D'you know I
have quite a pathetic feeling of tenderness for the memory of that too
sharp little boy. Little does he know how gladly I would give him the
best coat in my possession--if I could only find him!

"Now, dearest of old friends, I must stop. Nellie is sitting on one
side of me, mother on the other, and old Nell in front--which will
account to you, in some degree, for the madness of my condition.

"Once more, in the hope of a joyful meeting, I wish you `a merry
Christmas and a happy New Year.'"

THE END.

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Publication Date: 07-05-2010

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