"A codicil?"
"Iss, just to say, 'No wimmen allowed but Tamsin Dearlove—us don't mind she.' Wudn' that do, sir?"
"I'm afraid not, Caleb. By-the-bye, how does your Notice run? 'All women found trespassing will be—'"
"Dealt wi' 'cordin' to the law, sir."
"Dear me, Caleb!" murmured Mr. Fogo, "but I trust that under no circumstances should I deal with a woman otherwise than according to the law."
CHAPTER IX.
OF A TOWN THAT WOULD LAUGH AT THE GREAT. AND HOW A DULL COMPANY WAS CURED BY AN IRISH SONG.
We left the Misses Buzza engaged in rowing their papa homewards. The Three Queens as they steered King Arthur to Avilion can have been no sadder pageant. It is true the Misses Buzza grieved for no Excalibur, but the Admiral had lost his cocked-hat.
Picture to yourself that procession: the journey past the jetties; the faces that grinned down from overhanging hulls, or looked out hurriedly at casements and grew pale; the blue-jerseyed Trojan lounging on the quay, and pausing in his whistle to stare; the Trojan maidens gazing, with arrested needle; the shipwrights dropping mallet and tar-pot; the ferrymen resting on their oars; the makers of ship's biscuit rushing out, with aprons flying, to see the sight; the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker—each and all agog. Then imagine the Olympian mirth that ran along the waterside when Troy saw the joke, and, hand on hip, laughed with all its lungs.