_Postscript._--I did not tell you that Blandly,
who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if
we don t turn up by the end of August, had found
an admirable fellow for sailing master--a stiff
man, which I regret, but in all other respects a
treasure. Long John Silver unearthed a very
competent man for a mate, a man named Arrow. I
have a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so things
shall go man-o -war fashion on board the good ship
HISPANIOLA.
I forgot to tell you that Silver is a man of
substance; I know of my own knowledge that he has
a banker s account, which has never been
overdrawn. He leaves his wife to manage the inn;
and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old
bachelors like you and I may be excused for
guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the
health, that sends him back to roving.
J. T.
P.P.S.--Hawkins may stay one night with his
mother.
J. T.
You can fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. I was half
beside myself with glee; and if ever I despised a man, it was old
Tom Redruth, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. Any of the
under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such
was not the squire s pleasure, and the squire s pleasure was like law
among them all. Nobody but old Redruth would have dared so much as even
to grumble.
The next morning he and I set out on foot for the Admiral Benbow, and
there I found my mother in good health and spirits. The captain, who had
so long been a cause of so much discomfort, was gone where the wicked
cease from troubling. The squire had had everything repaired, and the
public rooms and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture--above
all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. He had found her a boy
as an apprentice also so that she should not want help while I was gone.
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