With Clive in India | Page 3

safe."
"Yes," Mrs. Marryat said, sobbing; "I know how you will come back. A
little, yellow, shrivelled up old man with no liver, and a dreadful
temper, and a black servant. I know what it will be."
This time Charlie could not help laughing.

"That's looking too far ahead altogether, Mother. You take the two
extremes. If I don't die in a fortnight, I am to live to be a shrivelled old
man. I'd rather take a happy medium, and look forward to coming back
before my liver is all gone, or my temper all destroyed, with lots of
money to make you and the girls comfortable.
"There is only one thing. I wish it had been a cadetship, instead of a
writership."
"That is my only comfort," Mrs. Marryat said. "If it had been a
cadetship, I should have written to say that I would not let you go. It is
bad enough as it is; but if you had had to fight, I could not have borne
it."
Charlie did his best to console his mother, by telling her how everyone
who went to India made fortunes, and how he should be sure to come
back with plenty of money; and that, when the girls grew up, he should
be able to find rich husbands for them; and at last he succeeded in
getting her to look at matters in a less gloomy light.
"And I'm sure, Mother," he said, "Uncle means most kindly. He sends
twenty pounds, you see, and says that that is for immediate necessities;
so I have no doubt he means to help to get my outfit, or at any rate to
advance money, which I can repay him out of my salary. The letter is
rather stiff and businesslike, of course, but I suppose that's his way; and
you see he asks about your income, so perhaps he means to help for the
girls' education. I should go away very happy, if I knew that you would
be able to get on comfortably. Of course it's a long way off, Mother,
and I should have liked to stay at home, to be a help to you and the girls;
but one can't have all one wishes. As far as I am concerned, myself, I
would rather go out as a writer there, where I shall see strange sights
and a strange country, than be stuck all my life at a desk in London.
"What is Uncle like?"
"He is a short man, my dear, rather stiff and pompous, with a very stiff
cravat. He used to give me his finger to shake, when I was a child, and I
was always afraid of him. He married a most disagreeable woman, only

a year or two before I married, myself. But I heard she died not very
long afterwards;" and so Mrs. Marryat got talking of her early days and
relations, and was quite in good spirits again, by the time her daughters
returned from school; and she told them what she was now coming to
regard as the good fortune which had befallen their brother.
The girls were greatly affected. They adored their brother, and the
thought that he was going away for years was terrible to them. Nothing
that could be said pacified them in the slightest degree, and they did
nothing but cry, until they retired to bed. Charlie was much affected by
their sorrow; but when they had retired, he took his hat and went out to
tell the news of his approaching departure to some of his chums.
The next day, Mrs. Marryat wrote thanking her uncle for his kindness,
and saying that Charlie would go round to London by the packet which
sailed on the following Monday; and would, if the wind were fair and
all went well, reach London on the Wednesday.
School was, of course, at once given up, and the girls also had a
holiday till their brother's departure. When the necessary clothes were
ordered, there was little more to do; and Charlie spent the time, when
his boy friends were in school, in walking with the girls along the shore,
talking to them of the future, of the presents he would send them home,
and of the life he should lead in India; while at other times he went out
with his favourite schoolfellows, and joined in one last grand battle
with the smack boys.
On Monday morning, after a sad farewell to his family, Charlie
embarked on board the Yarmouth Belle, a packet which performed the
journey to and from London once a fortnight. She was a roomy lugger,
built for stowage rather than speed, and her hold was crammed and her
deck piled with packages of salted fish. There were five or six other