A Sailors Lass | Page 9

swears, till you come and said your prayers to Him."
"Still, He might, yer know," said Tiny; "but if you'll help, I'll find out all about it."
"What can yer do?" asked Dick.
"Well, I'll tell yer why I want dad to come home soon to-night," said Tiny, resting her hands on the basket, and looking anxiously across the sea. "Mother said he'd take the samphire by boat to Fellness, and I thought perhaps he'd take me too."
"Well, s'pose he did?" said Dick, who could see no connection between a visit to the village and the attainment of the knowledge they both desired.
"Why, then I might get a book," said Tiny. "I'd go with dad to sell the samphire; and then we'd see the shops; and if he had a good take, and we got a lot of samphire, he'd have enough money to buy me a book, as well as the bread and flour and tea."
Dick burst into a loud laugh. "So this is your secret; this is what you've been thinking of like a little goose all day."
Tiny was half offended. "You needn't laugh," she said; "I shall do it, Dick."
"Will yer?" he said, in a teasing tone. "If there wasn't no whisky, and there was bookshops at Fellness, you might. Why, what do you think the village is like?" he asked.
"Like? Oh, I dunno! Everything comes from Fellness," added the little girl, vaguely.
To the dwellers at the Point, the little fishing-village was the centre of the universe; and Tiny, with faint recollections of a large town, with broad streets, and rows of shops all brilliantly lighted at night, had formed magnificently vague notions of Fellness as being something like this; and she had only got to go there, and it would be easy to coax the old fisherman to buy her a book, as she coaxed him to build her a castle in the sand, or take her on his knee and tell her tales of ships that had been wrecked on the bar sands.
"But do you know what Fellness is like?" persisted Dick. "There ain't no shops at all--only one, where they sells flour, and bread, and 'bacca, and tea, and sugar, and soap. They has meat there sometimes; but I never sees no books, and I don't believe they ever has 'em there," concluded the boy.
"Perhaps they keeps 'em in a box where you can't see 'em," suggested Tiny, who was very unwilling to relinquish her hope.
"Pigs might fly, and they will when they sells books at Fellness," remarked Dick.
"Where does Harry Hayes get his from?" suddenly asked the girl; and at the same moment she espied a speck on the horizon, which she decided was a fisherman's boat. "He's coming, Dick, dad's coming," she exclaimed. "Make haste--make haste and fill up the baskets;" and she tore away at the seaweed, piling it into the baskets as fast as her small hands would permit. "Now we'll carry one down," she said, taking hold of the handle. "Catch hold, Dick;" for she wanted to be at the edge of the sands by the time the boat touched the shore.
But Dick was in no such hurry to meet his father. "There's plenty of time," he said, leisurely untying a knot in a piece of string.
"No there isn't, Dick; don't you know I'm going to Fellness in the boat."
"But you're afraid," said the boy; "ain't father tried to coax you lots o' times to go out with him, and yer never would? You'll just get to the edge, and when yer sees it rock a bit yer'll run away."
"No, I won't, Dick, this time," said the little girl. But as she spoke a shiver of fear and dread ran through her frame at the thought of the swaying boat.
Dick saw it, and laughed. "Didn't I tell yer you was afraid," he said, in a mocking tone; "what's the good of going down there, when you're frightened?"
"But I want a book, Dick; I must learn to read, and find out what we want to know. Oh, do make haste!" she added, as she saw the boat approaching the shore.
Dick was still laughing, but he helped her carry the basket, though he teased her as they went along about being frightened. They got across the sands with their samphire, just as Coomber and Bob were springing ashore.
"Oh, daddy, take me with yer to Fellness," called Tiny, shutting her eyes as she spoke that she might not see the treacherous waves and the swaying boat.
"Halloo, halloo! What now, deary?" exclaimed Coomber. And it was wonderful to see the change in his hard face as he lifted the little girl in his arms and kissed her.
"She says she'll go," said Dick, "but I don't believe she means it."
"Yes I do. You'll take me, daddy, won't