writin some jopnell content that i want to see in the world and starting with uh [spins wheel] Jopson Interacting With The Hartnell Gremlin
“Do you think you’re very clever?” Betsy asks. Or, rather, Jopson believes she’s asking him, as her upper half is currently obscured by the branches of a tree. Branches move in a way that suggests she’s priming for the rest of her ascent, and Jopson instinctively moves toward the base, expecting the youngest Hartnell sister to come tumbling down like a loosened apple.
“Pardon?” he asks the branches.
She makes a noise in the back of her throat—something like disgust. “Oh, you’ve answered my question already.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what the question was at all, Miss Hartnell.”
Her head pokes out from the leaves, framing her face like she’s some sort of angry wood sprite. Her long black braid hangs down like a vine, swaying in the September breeze. “You’re either a fool, completely in love, or both.” Her dark brows furrow. “Probably both.”
This time, with much more feeling, “Pardon?”
Betsy rolls her eyes before disappearing back into the tree, and Jopson only sees the white flicker of a stocking before she’s making a higher ascent. It’s not proper, certainly, and he’s already tried to tell her so. Yet as her older brother warned, attempting to corral Betsy into being proper was just a slight degree above impossible.
“D’you really think no one’s noticed you two sighing over each other?” she says. Then, she drops her voice and layers a thick dockyard accent over it. “‘Oh, Mister Jopson! You’re so talented at making bread and fixing my buttons and— Ohhh, is there anything you can’t do?’”
Jopson finds himself at a crossroads between insulted and amused. “He doesn’t sound like that,” he says, rather than defending himself or Hartnell.
“I grew up with him. I know what he sounds like,” Betsy retorts.
He turns his stare down at the ground, at the mealy apples and old, dead leaves. “Nothing of the sort is happening, Miss Hartnell. Your brother and I are friends and—”
She reappears again in a flurry of leaves, higher this time, and less amused. “Come off it, Mister Jopson,” she says flatly. “A lieutenant suddenly decides to befriend Tommy?”
“What do you make of Captain Crozier then?”
Betsy shrugs, disappears for a moment, and returns with an apple in her hand, looking triumphant. “He reminds me of a father an’ both of you are looking for his blessings before you post the Banns.”
Jopson nearly squawks, indignant. “I beg your pardon!”
He struggles with words long enough for Betsy to get another apple and tosses it down to him with the accuracy of the Navy’s finest gunner. Hartnell was also right when he said she would have made a spectacular sailor. It lands neatly in his hands—either as a peace offering or a projectile weapon, he isn’t sure.
“All’s I’m saying, Mister Jopson, is that I’ve noticed, and Mary’s noticed, even though she’s far too polite to say anything,” Betsy goes on before she takes a massive bite of her apple. Jopson can almost hear her mother chastising her table manners; or, perhaps, tree manners.
Her expression silences him. The Hartnell family all share the same trait of communicating their exact feeling through their faces with no verbal effort. In this case, Betsy looks at him like he’s the greatest fool in the world. Immediately, he feels like it.
“—nothing to notice,” he finishes rather lamely. In a way, he feels defeated, and all by a teenage girl perched in a tree.
“Mhmm. Well, once you’re a bit more comfortable with the truth, can you kindly do my sister and I a favour and stop acting like a lovelorn heroine whenever he enters the room? Your sighs will put all of our candles out, I think.”
Any retort he might have lights up, then fizzles out with a smile perking the corners of his lips. In a strange way, he feels like Betsy approves of him, and her permission is far more valuable than any a father or mother could give.
