I don't know
whether a door ain't too aristocratic; but here goes for the first one!'
He went up to the nearest cabin, and knocked with his hand. Being
desired to enter, he complied.
'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 younder, 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.
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