The Lost Heir

"You give me your word for that, Nibson?"

"Yes, sir; I swear off it altogether from the present day."

"Good. I will take your word for it, and you can go in and come out as you like without being watched, and you need not fear that we shall pay you another visit."

Walter went off in fair spirits. The promise that he should come down again and see his friends and have a sail in the barge lessened the pang of leaving, and as Hilda's and Netta's faces came more strongly back to him, as they talked to him and recalled pleasant things that had almost faded from his memory, he went away contentedly, while Betsy Nibson went back to the house and had what she called "a good cry." She too, however, cheered up when her husband told her how narrow an escape he had had, and how he had given his word that he would drop smuggling altogether.

"That makes my mind easier than it has been for years, Bill. And will you give up the other thing, too? There may not be much harm in running kegs and bacca, but there is no doubt about its being wrong to have anything to do with stolen goods and to mix yourself up with men who steal them."

"Yes, I will give that up, too, Betsy; and, as soon as I have time to look round, I will give an order for a new barge to be built for me. I have been ashamed of the old thing for a long time past with her patched sails. Of course, she suited my purpose, for when the other barges kept on their course it gave me a good excuse for anchoring; but it aint pleasant to have every barge passing you. There is old Joe Hargett; he said the other day that, if I ever thought of getting a new barge, he would give a hundred for her. He has got a set of decent sails, and he is a pretty handy carpenter, and no doubt he will make her look decent again. A hundred pounds aint much, but it will help. I can get a new one complete, sails and all, for fourteen or fifteen hundred, and have a hundred or two left in the bag afterwards. I tell you what, Betsy, I will get an extra comfortable cabin made, and a place forward for Joshua. It will be dull for you here now the child is gone, and it would be a sight more comfortable for us both to be always together."

"That it will, Bill," she said joyfully. "I was always very happy on board till we lost our Billy. I took a dislike to it then, and was glad enough to come here; but I have got over it now, and this place is very lonely during the long winter nights when you are away."

Then they talked over the barge, and how the cabin should be fitted up, and, in spite of having lost Walter, the evening was a pleasant one to them.

That was not the only conversation that took place that day with reference to a new barge for Bill Nibson. As they rowed up against the tide, Hilda said:

"We must do something for that bargeman, Colonel Bulstrode. I am sure we cannot be too grateful to him and his wife for their treatment of Walter. Think how different it might have been had he fallen into bad hands. Now he looks the picture of health; the change in the life and the open air has done wonders. You know, Dr. Leeds said that the officer of the coastguard had told him that Nibson's barge was one of the oldest and rottenest crafts on the river. Now, I propose that we buy him a new one. What would it cost, Colonel Bulstrode?"

"I have not the slightest idea," the Colonel replied; "it might cost five hundred pounds, or it might cost five thousand, for all I know."

"I will ask the waterman," Hilda said, and raising her voice she said, "How much do barges cost when they are new?"

"From ten or eleven hundred up to fifteen," the man said.

"Does that include sails and all?"

"Yes, miss; down to the boat."

"Who is considered the best barge-builder?"

"Well, there are a good many of them, miss; but I should say that Gill, of Rochester, is considered as good as any."

"What do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?" Hilda said. "Should we, as Walter's guardians, be justified in spending this money? Mind, I don't care a bit whether we are or not, because I would buy it myself if it would not be right for us to use his money."

"I am afraid that it would not be right," Mr. Pettigrew said. "As a trustee of the property, I should certainly not feel myself justified in sanctioning such a sum being drawn, though I quite admit that this good couple should be rewarded. I cannot regard a barge as a necessary; anything in reason that the child could require we should be justified in agreeing to. Of course, whatever may be his expenses at a public school, we should pay them without hesitation; but for a child of that age to give a present of fifteen hundred pounds would be altogether beyond our power to sanction."

"Very well," Hilda said decidedly, "then I shall take the matter into my own hands, and I shall go down to Rochester to-morrow and see if these people have a barge ready built. I don't know whether they are the sort of things people keep in stock."

"That I can't say, my dear. I should think it probable that in slack times they may build a barge or two on speculation, for the purpose of keeping their hands employed, but whether that is the case now or not I don't know. If these people at Rochester have not got one you may hear of one somewhere else. I want you all to come up to the office one day next week to talk over this matter of the order Simcoe is applying for – for us to carry out the provisions of the will – at any rate, as far as his legacy is concerned."

"Very well, Mr. Pettigrew, I will come up any time that you write to me, but you know that I have very strong opinions about it."

"I know your opinions are strong, as ladies' opinions generally are," Mr. Pettigrew said with a smile; "but, unfortunately, they are much more influenced by their own view of matters than by the legal bearing of them. However, we will talk that over when we meet again."

The arrival of Walter occasioned the most lively joy in Hyde Park Gardens. Hilda had written to his nurse, who had gone home to live with her mother when all hope of finding Walter had seemed to be at an end, to tell her that he would probably be at home on Wednesday evening, and that she was to be there to meet him. Her greeting of him was rapturous. It had been a source of bitter grief to her that he had been lost through a momentary act of carelessness on her part, and the relief that Hilda's letter had caused was great indeed. The child was scarcely less pleased to see her, for he retained a much more vivid recollection of her than he did of the others. He had already been told of his grandfather's death, but a year had so effaced his memory of him that he was not greatly affected at the news. In the course of a few hours he was almost as much at home in the house as if he had never left it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A NEW BARGE

The next morning Hilda went down to Rochester with Netta, Tom Roberts accompanying them. They had no difficulty in discovering the barge-builder's. It seemed to the girls a dirty-looking place, thickly littered as it was with shavings; men were at work on two or three barges which seemed, thus seen out of the water, an enormous size.

"Which is Mr. Gill?" Hilda asked a man passing.

"That is him, miss," and he pointed to a man who was in the act of giving directions to some workmen. They waited until he had finished, and then went up to him.

"I want to buy a barge, Mr. Gill," Hilda said.

"To buy a barge!" he repeated in surprise, for never before had he had a young lady as a customer.

Hilda nodded. "I want to give it to a bargeman who has rendered me a great service," as if it were an everyday occurrence for a young lady to buy a barge as a present. "I want it at once, please; and it is to be a first-class barge. How much would it cost?"

The builder rubbed his chin. "Well, miss, it is a little unusual to sell a barge right off in this way; as a rule people want barges built for them. Some want them for speed, some want them for their carrying capacity."

"I want a first-class barge," Hilda replied. "I suppose it will be for traffic on the Thames, and that he will like it to be fast."

"Well, miss," the builder said slowly, for he could not yet quite persuade himself that this young lady was really prepared to pay such a sum as a new barge would cost, "I have got such a barge. She was launched last week, but I had a dispute with the man for whom I built her, and I said that I would not hold him to his bargain, and that he could get a barge elsewhere. He went off in a huff, but I expect he will come back before long and ask me to let him have her, and I should not be altogether sorry to say that she is gone. She is a first-class barge, and I expect that she will be as fast as anything on the river. Of course, I have got everything ready for her – masts, sails, and gear, even down to her dingey – and in twenty-four hours she would be ready to sail. The price is fifteen hundred pounds," and he looked sharply at Hilda to see what effect that communication would have. To his great surprise she replied quietly:

"That is about the sum I expected, Mr. Gill. Can we look at her?"

"Certainly, miss; she is lying alongside, and it is nearly high tide."

He led the way over piles of balks of timber, across sloppy pieces of ground, over which at high tide water extended, to the edge of the wharf, where the barge floated. She was indeed all ready for her mast; her sides shone with fresh paint, her upper works were painted an emerald green, a color greatly in favor among bargemen, and there was a patch of the same on her bow, ready for the name, surrounded by gilt scrollwork.

"There she is, miss; as handsome a barge as there is afloat."

"I want to see the cabin. What a little place!" she went on, as she and Netta went down through a narrow hatchway, "and how low!"

"It is the usual height in barges, miss, and the same size, unless especially ordered otherwise."

"I should like the cabin to be made very comfortable, for I think the boatman will have his wife on board. Could it not be made a little larger?"

"There would be no great difficulty about that. You see, this is a water-tight compartment, but of course it could be carried six feet farther forward and a permanent hatchway be fixed over it, and the lining made good in the new part. As to height, one might put in a good-sized skylight; it would not be usual, but of course it could be done."

"And you could put the bed-place across there, could you not, and put a curtain to draw across it?"

"Yes, that could be managed easy enough, miss; and it would make a very tidy cabin."

"Then how much would that cost extra?"

"Forty or fifty pounds, at the outside."

"And when could you get it all finished, and everything painted a nice color?"

"I could get it done in a week or ten days, if you made a point of it."

"I do make a point of it," Hilda said.