Joanna Mathews - Bessie on Her Travels

“I think we shall do now. I’ll be back in half an hour, Mrs. Bradford, to see how my patient here is getting on,” and walked away.

“Maggie,” said Bessie, as soon as he had gone, “wasn’t that meal very nas – , I mean rather disagreeable?”

“Why, no,” said Maggie, “it was delicious; and I think that captain is lovely, Bessie. He’s the best doctor ever I saw. The next time I come to sea – which I hope I never will again – I’ll put herring in my satchel ’stead of lemons. They never did me a bit of good.”

Bessie privately thought this worse than the “pickle arrangement;” but since the captain’s prescription had done Maggie so much good, she had nothing more to say against it or him; and when he came back at the promised time it was to find his little patient beginning to look like herself, and talking and smiling with something of her accustomed brightness.

This was the last of Maggie’s seasickness, and by the next morning she was nearly as lively and well as usual; though she now and then fell into a fit of thought, as if she were considering some knotty question; and she was observed to regard Margaret Bessie Marion with more than usual interest, and to give her a great amount of petting and tending. At length the question which was weighing on her mind found words.

“Papa,” she said, “don’t lawyers know about wills?”

“They ought to, Maggie,” answered Mr. Bradford. “Why, you don’t want to make yours, do you?”

“I have made it, papa,” said Maggie, with all the gravity of a judge. “I told Bessie about it, but I want to know if it’s against the law to undo the things you’ve willed, if you don’t die when you thought you were going to.”

“Not at all,” said papa, laughing: “you may make your will, and ‘undo it’ as often as you please, while you are living.”

“For the people won’t be disappointed as long as they don’t know you’ve willed them the things,” said Maggie, meditatively. “Anyhow, I s’pose my people would be more disappointed to have me die, than not to have my things.”

“They would indeed, little daughter,” said her father, drawing her tenderly to him: “to lose our Maggie would be to take a great deal of sunshine out of the lives of ‘your people.’”

“And I know Bessie don’t care for my dollies so long as we can play with them together: do you, Bessie?”

“Oh, no! Maggie; and if I hadn’t you, I should never play again, but be sorrowful all my life;” and Bessie put on an air of extreme melancholy at the bare idea of such a possibility.

So this matter being settled to the satisfaction of all, and Maggie feeling like her own self once more, she and Bessie were free to enjoy all the new pleasures about them.

They were a merry, happy party, those four little girls, Maggie, Bessie, Belle, and Lily; always pleasant and good-natured with one another; never fretting or quarrelling in their play. As for Maggie, her new friend the captain used to call her “Little Make-the-best-of-it;” for her sunny temper found so much good in all things, and so many reasons why all that was, was best.

He escorted the young quartette all over the steamer, taking them down into the machine rooms, where they saw the great furnaces glowing with hot coals, and tended by strong men in scarlet shirts, with their sleeves rolled up to the shoulders; where the iron beam and pistons went up and down, up and down, without a moment’s pause or irregularity; where each little wheel and joint went steadily on doing its appointed work, without which the huge machinery must have stood motionless and useless.

The sympathies of the children, especially those of Maggie, were greatly excited in behalf of a man whom they saw watching the steam dial plates at the upper end of the engine room. There were three of these plates, the centre one very large, the other two smaller; and the man paced up and down the narrow platform in front, almost without a moment’s pause, turning his eyes every now and then to the dials.

“What funny clocks,” said Bessie, “and how that man watches them! Why is he so anxious about the time?”

“Only one of them is a clock,” said the captain; “the others are to show how much steam we have on, and how it is working, and if all is right.”

Bessie did not understand, and said so; and the captain, taking her up in his arms, tried to explain the use and working of the dials to the little girls; but it was rather a difficult matter for them to take in, and I do not know that he made it very clear to them.

“But I want to know about that man,” said Maggie: “does he have to walk here and look at these things all the time?”

“All the time,” said Captain Brooks.

“Doesn’t he eat and sleep?” asked Belle.

“Oh! to be sure,” said the captain. “I said he was here all the time; but I should have said a man was here all the time; for there is another who takes his turn while this one rests.”

“But are you not tired sometimes?” Bessie asked of the man, who just then came to the end of the platform where she was.

He nodded assent as he turned, but made no answer in words, did not even smile, being a grum-looking man, and seeming altogether intent on his dials.

“He’s not very polite just to nod at you and not speak,” said Lily.

“It is against the rule of the ship for him to talk while he is on duty, and he always keeps the rule,” said the captain.

“Oh!” said Maggie, her pity more than ever roused for the object of her interest: “does he have to walk on this little bit of a place with nothing to amuse him, and can’t even talk? I think that is pretty hard: I never could do it.”

“But if he were talking and chatting with every one who came along, and thinking only of his own amusement, he would forget his work and have his attention taken off from those plates which it is his business to watch constantly,” said the captain.

“And then we’d be blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” said Maggie.

“Not as bad as that, I hope,” said Captain Brooks, smiling; “but something might readily go wrong before he perceived it.”

“It seems like watching conscience all the time for fear we do something naughty,” said Bessie, who had been thoughtfully regarding the man since she last spoke. “If we forget conscience, or don’t pay attention where it points, we can be naughty before we know it.”

“Just so,” said the captain, looking at her half in amusement, half in surprise; “but tell me, little one, do you find some moral lesson in every thing?”

“I don’t know what ‘moral’ is, sir,” said Bessie, demurely; “but I think that man is a pretty good lesson to us.”

Here roguish Lily, for whom the prospect of being “blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” did not seem to have any terrors, and who had been all this time trying to distract the watchman’s attention by shaking her head and finger at him, flirting her pocket-handkerchief, and giving little squeaks and “hems,” all without any avail, suddenly astonished him and accomplished her object, by firing a paper pellet which hit him directly between the eyes. The gruff old fellow only gave her a growl in return, however, and recommenced his pacing up and down; but Lily went capering about in an ecstasy of delight at her unlooked-for success, till the captain, who could not help laughing, called her to order with, —

“Here, here, you elf! have done with your monkey tricks, or I shall shut you up in a cage till we get to shore.”

“You’ve none large enough,” said laughing Lily.

“There are plenty of hencoops on board,” said the captain, pretending to look fierce, “and carpenters too, to make any sized cage I may order. You had better look out.”