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Well, this terrible accident not only widowed the poor soul, but brought all her little jealousies, as you might say, home to roost. She couldn’t abide Nandy, and Nandy had reached an age when boys aren’t at their best. But adopt him she had to; and, what tried her worse, she was forced to look after his health with more than a mother’s care. For, outside of a stockingful of guineas, all her capital was sunk in Merry-Garden, and all Merry-Garden hung now on the boy’s life.

The worst trial of all was that, somehow or other, Nandy got to know his value and the reason of it, and from that day he gave Aunt Barbree no peace. He wouldn’t go to school; study gave him a headache. His mother had taught him to read and write, but under Aunt Barbree’s roof he learned no more than he was minded to, and among the things he taught himself was a tolerable imitation of a hacking cough. With this and the help of a hollow tooth he could spit blood whenever he wanted a shilling. He played this game for about six months, until the poor woman–who was losing flesh with lying awake at night and wondering what would happen to her when cast out in the cold world–fixed up her courage to know the worst, and carried him off to a Plymouth doctor. The doctor advised her to take the boy home and give him the strap.

Aunt Barbree applied this treatment for a time, but dropped it in the end. The boy was growing too tall for it. The visit to the doctor, however, worked like a miracle in one way.

“Auntie,” said the penitent one day, “I’m feeling a different boy altogether, this last week or two.”

“I reckoned you would,” said Aunt Barbree.

“My appetite’s improving. Have you noticed my appetite?”

“Heaven is my witness!” said Aunt Barbree. The cherry season was beginning. She had consulted with a friend of hers in Saltash, the wife of a confectioner. It seems that apprentices in the confectionery trade are allowed to eat pastry and lollypops without let or hindrance, until they take a surfeit and are cured for ever after. Aunt Barbree was beginning to wonder why the cure worked so slow in the case of fresh fruit. “Heaven is my witness, I have!” said Aunt Barbree.

“There’s a complete change coming over my constitution,” said Nandy, pensive-like. “I feel it hardening every day: and as for my skull, why– talk about Brazil nuts!–I believe I could crack cherry-stones with it.”

“I beg you won’t try,” pleaded Aunt Barbree, for this trick of Nandy’s always gave her the shivers.

“A head like mine was meant for something worthier than civil life. I’ve been turnin’ it over–“

“Turnin’ what over?”

“Things in general,” said Nandy; “and the upshot is, I’ve a great mind to ‘list for a sojer.”

“The good Lord forbid!” cried Aunt Barbree.

“The Frenchies might shoot me, to be sure,” Nandy allowed. “That’s one way of looking at it. But King George would take the risk o’ that, and give me a shilling down for it.”

“O Nandy, Nandy–here’s a shillin’ for ‘ee, if that’s what you want! But be a good boy, and don’t talk so irreligious!”

Well, sir, the lad knew he had the whip-hand of the poor woman, and the taller he grew the more the lazy good-for-nothing used it. Enlistment was his trump card, and he went to the length of buying a drill-book and practising the motions in odd corners of the garden, but always so that his aunt should catch him at it. If she was slow in catching him, the young villain would draw attention by calling out words from the manual in a hollow voice, mixed up with desperate ones of his own composing– “At the word of command the rear rank steps back one pace, the whole facing to the left, the left files then taking a side step to the left and a pace to the rear. Ready, p’sent! Ha, what do I see afore me? Is’t the hated foeman?”–and so on, and so on. Aunt Barbree, with tears in her eyes, would purse out sums varying from sixpence to half a crown, coaxing him to dismiss such murderous thoughts from his mind; and thereupon he’d take another turn and mope, saying that it ill became a lad of his inches, let alone his tremenjous spirit, to idle out his days while others were dying for their country; to oblige his aunt he would stand it as long as he could, but nobody need be surprised if he ended by drowning himself, And this frightened Aunt Barbree almost worse than did his talk of enlisting, and drove her one day, when Nandy had just turned seventeen, to take a walk up the valley to consult Dr. Clatworthy.