'Ask Mr. Bell,' said he in a hollow voice.
'Mr. Bell!' said she, a little surprised.
'Mr. Bell of Oxford?'
'Mr. Bell,' he repeated.
'Yes.
He was my groom's-man.'
Margaret understood the association.
'I will write to-day,' said she.
He sank again into listlessness.
All morning she toiled on, longing for rest, but in a continual whirl of melancholy business.
Towards evening, Dixon said to her:
'I've done it, miss.
I was really afraid for master, that he'd have a stroke with grief.
He's been all this day with poor missus; and when I've listened at the door, I've heard him talking to her, and talking to her, as if she was alive.
When I went in he would be quite quiet, but all in a maze like.
So I thought to myself, he ought to be roused; and if it gives him a shock at first, it will, maybe, be the better afterwards.
So I've been and told him, that I don't think it's safe for Master Frederick to be here.
And I don't.
It was only on Tuesday, when I was out, that I met-a Southampton man—the first I've seen since I came to Milton; they don't make their way much up here, I think.
Well, it was young Leonards, old Leonards the draper's son, as great a scamp as ever lived—who plagued his father almost to death, and then ran off to sea.
I never could abide him.
He was in the Orion at the same time as Master Frederick, I know; though I don't recollect if he was there at the mutiny.'
'Did he know you?' said Margaret, eagerly.
'Why, that's the worst of it.
I don't believe he would have known me but for my being such a fool as to call out his name.
He were a Southampton man, in a strange place, or else I should never have been so ready to call cousins with him, a nasty, good-for-nothing fellow.
Says he,
"Miss Dixon! who would ha' thought of seeing you here?
But perhaps I mistake, and you're Miss Dixon no longer?"
So I told him he might still address me as an unmarried lady, though if I hadn't been so particular, I'd had good chances of matrimony.
He was polite enough: "He couldn't look at me and doubt me."
But I were not to be caught with such chaff from such a fellow as him, and so I told him; and, by way of being even, I asked him after his father (who I knew had turned him out of doors), as if they was the best friends as ever was.
So then, to spite me—for you see we were getting savage, for all we were so civil to each other—he began to inquire after Master Frederick, and said, what a scrape he'd got into (as if Master Frederick's scrapes would ever wash George Leonards' white, or make 'em look otherwise than nasty, dirty black), and how he'd be hung for mutiny if ever he were caught, and how a hundred pound reward had been offered for catching him, and what a disgrace he had been to his family—all to spite me, you see, my dear, because before now I've helped old Mr. Leonards to give George a good rating, down in Southampton.
So I said, there were other families be thankful if they could think they were earning an honest living as I knew, who had far more cause to blush for their sons, and to far away from home.
To which he made answer, like the impudent chap he is, that he were in a confidential situation, and if I knew of any young man who had been so unfortunate as to lead vicious courses, and wanted to turn steady, he'd have no objection to lend him his patronage.
He, indeed!
Why, he'd corrupt a saint.
I've not felt so bad myself for years as when I were standing talking to him the other day.
I could have cried to think I couldn't spite him better, for he kept smiling in my face, as if he took all my compliments for earnest; and I couldn't see that he minded what I said in the least, while I was mad with all his speeches.'
'But you did not tell him anything about us—about Frederick?'
'Not I,' said Dixon.
'He had never the grace to ask where I was staying; and I shouldn't have told him if he had asked.
Nor did I ask him what his precious situation was.
He was waiting for a bus, and just then it drove up, and he hailed it.
But, to plague me to the last, he turned back before he got in, and said,
"If you can help me to trap Lieutenant Hale, Miss Dixon, we'll go partners in the reward.
I know you'd like to be my partner, now wouldn't you?
Don't be shy, but say yes."
And he jumped on the bus, and I saw his ugly face leering at me with a wicked smile to think how he'd had the last word of plaguing.'
Margaret was made very uncomfortable by this account of Dixon's.