CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

     A Scene in the Hospital, and a strange Discovery.

In a very few days Bramble and Bessy were sufficiently recovered to resume their usual avocations; but the former expressed no willingness to embark again, and Bessy’s persuasions assisted to retain him at the cottage.  With me it was different.  I was still restless, and anxious for change; my feelings toward Bessy were those of admiration and esteem, but not yet of love.  Yet I could not help recalling to mind the words of Bramble, “Observe how she performs those duties which fall to her lot; if she is a good daughter she will make a good wife.”  I felt that she would make a good wife, and I wished that I could have torn from my bosom the remembrance of Janet, and have substituted the form of Bessy in her place.  We had been at the cottage nearly a week, when I received a letter from Anderson; he informed me that he had visited old Nanny, who had made her will in due form, and confided to him, and that he thought she was more inclined to listen to him than she had before been; that my father and mother and sister were well, and that Spicer had been obliged to go into the hospital with an abscess in his knee, occasioned by running something into it, and that it was reported that he was very ill, and, in all probability, amputation must take place.  I felt convinced that Spicer must have, in his hasty retreat, fallen over the iron railings which lay on the ground, and which had, as I mentioned, tripped me up; but with this difference, that, as the spikes of the railing were from me, and consequently I met with little injury, they must have been toward him, and had penetrated his knee, and thus it was that he had received the injury.  Anderson also stated that they were very busy at the hospital, receiving the men who had been maimed in the glorious battle of Trafalgar.  Altogether, I made up my mind that I would take the first ship that was offered for pilotage up the river, that I might know more of what was going on; and, as we sat down to supper, I mentioned my intentions to Bramble.

“All’s right.  Tom, you’re young, and ought to be moving; but just now I intend to take a spell on shore.  I have promised Bessy, and how can I refuse her anything, dear girl?  I don’t mean to say that I shall never pilot a vessel again, but I do feel that I am not so young as I was, and this last affair has shaken me not a little, that’s the truth of it.  There’s a time for all things, and when a man has enough he ought to be content, and not venture more.  Besides, I can’t bear to make Bessy unhappy; so, you see, I’ve half promised—­only half, Bessy, you know.”

“I think you would have done right if you had promised altogether,” replied I; “you have plenty to live upon, and are now getting a little in years.  Why should you not stay on shore, and leave them to work who want the money?”