A Sailors Lass | Page 9

shouldn't He love you, Dick?" said Tiny.

Dick looked down at the patched, ragged, nondescript garments that
served him as jacket and trousers, and then at his bare, sunburnt arms
and legs. "Well, I'm just Dick of the Point. I ain't a gal, and I ain't
pretty." Nobody could dispute the latter fact, which Dick himself
seemed to consider conclusive against any interest being taken in him,
for he heaved a sigh as he returned to his work of picking the samphire.
The sigh was not lost on Tiny. "Look here, Dick," she said, "you ain't a
gal, and p'r'aps you ain't pretty, but I love you;" and she threw her arms
round his neck as he stooped over the basket. "I love yer, Dick, and I'll
find out all about it for yer. I'm a'most sure God loves yer too."
"Oh, He can't yet, yer know," said Dick, drawing his arms across his
eyes to conceal the tears that had suddenly come into them. "I don't
never say no prayers nor nothing. I ain't never heerd about Him, only
when dad 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,"