Menhardoc | Page 7

skipper; "come back!"
"Arn't got time," roared Josh, frowning; and then, as the men cheered again: "Well, of all the gashly fuss as was ever made this is about the worst! Pull hard, my lad, and let's get out of it. I want to go home."
"And I want to get warm, Josh," said Will laughing. "I'm glad that poor fellow came round before we left."
"Well, I dunno," said Josh, sourly. "Of course you liked it because he called you a man. He ought to have knowed better, at his time o' life. Lor', Will, what a gashly peacock of a chap you would grow if it warn't for me."
CHAPTER THREE.
PILCHAR' WILL AND THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
"Been overboard again? Well, I never did see such a boy in my life; never!"
"What's the matter, Ruth?"
"Matter enough!" came in the same strident voice, in answer to the hoarse gruff inquiry. "There, who spoke to you? Just you get back to your work; and if that pie's burnt again to-day you'll have to leave!"
This last was to a heavy-faced simple-looking girl, who, on hearing her mistress's angry voice, had hurried into the passage of Nor'-nor'-west Cottage, Cliftside, and stood in front of the kitchen door, with one end of her apron in her mouth.
Amanda Trevor, commonly called Betsey, stepped back into the kitchen, just catching the word "dripping" as she closed the door--a word that excited her curiosity again, but she dared not try to gratify it; and if she had tried she would only have been disappointed on finding that it related to a few drops of water from Will Marion's clothes.
"I said--heave ho, there! what's the matter?" was heard again; and this time a very red-faced grey-haired man, with the lower part of his features framed in white bristles, and clad in a blue pea-jacket and buff waistcoat, ornamented with gilt anchor buttons, stood suddenly in the doorway on the right, smoking solemnly a long churchwarden clay pipe, rilling his mouth very full of smoke, and then aggravating the looker-on by puzzling him as to where the smoke would come from next-- for sometimes he sent a puff out of one corner of his mouth, sometimes out of the other. Then it would come from a little hole right in the middle, out of which he had taken the waxed pipe stem, but only for him perhaps to press one side of his nose with the pipe, and send the rest out of the left nostril, saving perhaps a little to drive from the right. The result of practice, for the old man had smoked a great deal.
"Collision?" said Abram Marion, ex-purser and pensioner of the British navy.
"No," said Mrs Ruth Marion, his little thin acid wife. "Overboard again, and he's dripping all over the place. It isn't long since he had those clothes."
"Six months," said the old purser, sending a couple of jets of tobacco smoke from his nostrils at once.
"Yes; and what with his growing so horribly, and the common stuff they sell for cloth now, shrinking so shamefully, he's always wanting clothes."
"Oh, these will last a long time yet, aunt!" said Will.
"No, they will not last a long time yet, Will!" cried the little lady, with her face all trouble wrinkles.
"Will," said the old man, stopping to say pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, as he emitted half a dozen tiny puffs of smoke, waving his pipe stem the while; "mind what your aunt says and you'll never repent."
"But he don't mind a word I say," cried the little woman, wringing her hands. "Wringing wet! just look at him!"
"Been fishing, my lass; and they brought home a fair haul," said the purser, throwing back his head, and shooting smoke at a fly on the ceiling.
"What's the use of his bringing home fair hauls if he destroys his clothes as he does; and the holes he makes in his stockings are shameful."
"Can't help getting wet at sea," said the ex-purser, solemnly spreading a good mouthful of smoke in a semicircle. "Water's wet, specially salt-water. Here, you, sir! how dare you make holes in your stockings for your aunt to mend? I don't believe your father ever dared to do such a thing in his life."
"It don't matter, Abram," said the old lady in a lachrymose whine; "it's my fate to toil, and I'm not long for this world, so it don't matter. It was my fate to be a toiler; and those clothes of his will be too small for him to wear when they're dry. I don't know what I'm to do."
"Stretch 'em," said the old gentleman, sending a cloud into his waistcoat.
"But they won't stretch," cried the old lady peevishly.
"Put 'em away and save 'em," said the old man. "I may adopt another nevvy--smaller size,"--and here there was