"And here have I been lyin' awake thinkin' how to spare your feelin's!" he protested.
"'Tis a very funny thing," answered Tregenza, "that you, who in the way o' money make it your business to know every man's affairs in Ardevora, should be the last to get wind of a little innercent merrymakin'. That's your riches, again."
After this one must allow that it was handsome of the Elder to summon the committee again and point out to them the uncertainty of the Pass By's floating when they got her down to the water. Had they considered this? They had not. So he offered them five hundredweight of lead to ballast and trim her; more, if it should be needed; and suggested their laying down moorings for her, well on the outer side of the harbour, where from his garden the old man would have a good sight of her. He would, if the committee approved, provide the moorings gratis.
On the day of the launch Ardevora dressed itself in all its bunting. A crowd of three hundred assembled in and around Tregenza's backyard and lined the adjacent walls to witness the ceremony and hear the speeches; but Elder Penno was neither a speech-maker nor a spectator. He could not, for nervousness, leave the quay, where he stood ready beside a cauldron of bubbling tar and a pile of lead pegs, to pay the ship over before she took the water, and trim her as soon as ever she floated. But when, amid cheers and to the strains of the Temperance Brass Band, she lay moored at length upon a fairly even keel, with the red ensign drooping from a staff over her stern, he climbed the hill to find Tregenza contemplating her with pride through the gap in his ruined wall.
"I missed 'ee at the christ'nin'," said the old man. "But it went off very well. Lev' us go into the house an' touch pipe."
"It surprises me," said the Elder, "to find you so cheerful as you be. An occupation like this goin' out o' your life—I reckoned you might feel it, a'most like the loss of a limb."
"A man o' my age ought to wean hisself from things earthly," said the old man; "an' besides, I've a-got you."
"Hey?"
"Henceforth I've a-got you, an' all to yourself."
"Seems a funny thing," mused the Elder; "an' you at this moment owin' me no less than seventy-five pound!"