Boys and Girls from ThackeraySweetser, Kate Dickinson
General
Boys and Girls from Thackeray
Sweetser, Kate Dickinson
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863 -- Characters
Franks was a pleasant man, who loved a joke. "We have," says he, "but
yonder ugly negro boy, who is fetching the trunks, and a passenger who
has the state cabin to himself."
Mr. Trail looked as if he would have preferred more mercies from Heaven.
"Confound you, Franks, and your luck! The 'Duke William,' which came in
last week, brought fourteen, and she is not half of our tonnage."
"And this passenger, who has the whole cabin, don't pay nothin',"
continued the Captain. "Swear now, it will do you good, Mr. Trail,
indeed it will. I have tried the medicine."
"A passenger take the whole cabin and not pay? Gracious mercy, are you a
fool, Captain Franks?"
"Ask the passenger himself, for here he comes." And as the master spoke,
a young man of some nineteen years of age came up the hatchway. He had a
cloak and a sword under his arm, and was dressed in deep mourning, and
called out, "Gumbo, you idiot, why don't you fetch the baggage out of the
cabin? Well, shipmate, our journey is ended. You will see all the little
folks to-night whom you have been talking about. Give my love to Polly,
and Betty, and little Tommy; not forgetting my duty to Mrs. Franks. I
thought, yesterday, the voyage would never be done, and now I am almost
sorry it is over. That little berth in my cabin looks very comfortable
now I am going to leave it."
Mr. Trail scowled at the young passenger who had paid no money for his
passage. He scarcely nodded his head to the stranger, when Captain
Franks said: "This here gentleman is Mr. Trail, sir, whose name you have
a-heerd of."
"It's pretty well known in Bristol, sir," says Mr. Trail, majestically.
"And this is Mr. Warrington, Madame Esmond Warrington's son, of
Castlewood," continued the Captain.
The British merchant's hat was instantly off his head, and the owner of
the beaver was making a prodigious number of bows, as if a crown-prince
were before him.
"Gracious powers, Mr. Warrington! This is a delight, indeed! What a
crowning mercy that your voyage should have been so prosperous! You have
my boat to go on shore. Let me cordially and respectfully welcome you to
England! Let me shake your hand as the son of my benefactress and
patroness, Mrs. Esmond Warrington, whose name is known and honoured on
Bristol 'Change, I warrant you. Isn't it, Franks?"
"There's no sweeter tobacco comes from Virginia," says Mr. Franks,
drawing a great brass tobacco-box from his pocket, and thrusting a quid
into his jolly mouth. "You don't know what a comfort it is, sir; you'll
take to it, bless you, as you grow older. Won't he, Mr. Trail? I wish you
had ten shiploads of it instead of one. You might have ten shiploads;
I've told Madame Esmond so; I've rode over her plantation; she treats me
like a lord when I go to the house. She is a real-born lady, she is; and
might have a thousand hogsheads as easy as her hundreds, if there were
but hands enough."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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