"Neighbour," said Mark; "for I am a neighbour, though you don't know me; I 've come a begging. Hallo! Hal—lo! Am I a-bed, and dreaming!"
He made this exclamation on hearing his own name pronounced, and finding himself clasped about the skirts by two little boys, whose faces he had often washed, and whose suppers he had often cooked, on board of that noble, and fast-sailing line of packet ship, the Screw.
"My eyes is wrong!" said Mark. "I don't believe 'em. That ain't my fellow-passenger yonder, a nursing her little girl, who, I am sorry to see, is so delicate; and that ain't her husband as come to New York to fetch her. Nor these," he added, looking down upon the boys, "ain't them two young shavers as was so familiar to me; though they are uncommon like 'em. That I must confess."
The woman shed tears, in very joy to see him; the man shook both his hands, and would not let them go; the two boys hugged his legs; the sick child, in the mother's arms, stretched out her burning little fingers, and muttered, in her hoarse, dry throat, his well-remembered name.
It was the same family, sure enough. Altered by the salubrious air of Eden. But the same.
"This is a new sort of a morning call," said Mark, drawing a long breath. "It strikes one all of a heap. Wait a little bit! I'm a coming round, fast. That 'll do! These gentlemen ain't my friends. Are they on the wisiting list of the house?"
The inquiry referred to certain gaunt pigs, who had walked in after him, and were much interested in the heels of the family. As they did not belong to the mansion, they were expelled by the two little boys.
"I ain't superstitious about toads," said Mark, looking round the room, "but if you could prevail upon the two or three I see in company, to step out at the same time, my young friends, I think they'd find the open air refreshing. Not that I at all object to 'em. A very handsome animal is a toad," said Mr. Tapley, sitting down upon a stool: "very spotted; very like a partickler style of old gentleman about the throat; very bright-eyed, very cool, and very slippy. But one sees 'em to the best advantage out of doors perhaps."
While pretending, with such talk as this, to be perfectly at his ease, and to be the most indifferent and careless of men, Mark Tapley had an eye on all around him. The wan and meagre aspect of the family, the changed looks of the poor mother, the fevered child she held in her lap, the air of great despondency and little hope on everything, were plain to him, and made a deep impression on his mind. He saw it all as clearly and as quickly, as with his bodily eyes he saw the rough shelves supported by pegs driven between the logs, of which the house was made; the flour-cask in the corner, serving also for a table; the blankets, spades, and other articles against the walls; the damp that blotched the ground; or the crop of vegetable rottenness in every crevice of the hut.
"How is it that you have come here?" asked the man, when their first expressions of surprise were over.
"Why, we come by the steamer last night," replied Mark. "Our
