"Well-a-well! I dare say the size don't matter, once you've got the knack. We've brought him along, anyway; and, what's more, we've made him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin' job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him."
"But—you'll excuse me—I don't quite follow—"
Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysteriously to his lip, then jerked a thumb in the direction of the river.
"If your Reverence wouldn' mind steppin' down to the creek with me?" he suggested respectfully.
Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed. Hard by the water's edge, backed by tall elms, stood a dilapidated fish-store, and below it lay a boat with nose aground on a beach of flat stones. Two men were in the boat. The barber—a slip of a fellow in rusty top-hat and suit of rusty black—sat in the stern-sheets face to face with a large cask; a cask so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook them at a high, uncomfortable angle. In the bows, boathook in hand, stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes similar to Mr. Jope's. His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity, and he wore a beard—not, however, where beards are usually worn, but as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin.
"Well, here we are!" announced Mr. Jope cheerfully. "Your Reverence knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers; bein' William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin—friends o' mine an' shipmates both."
The tall seaman touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction.
"But—but I only see one!" protested Parson Spettigew.
"This here's Bill Adams," said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat. "Is it Eli you're missin'? He's in the cask."
"Oh!"