Lizzie sat dumb, but hugged the bundle closer.
“’Tis like a judgment. If your mother’d been spared, ’twudn’ have happened. But ’twas to be, I s’pose. The Lord’s ways be past findin’ out.”
He woke up and struck the donkey across the rump.
“Gwan you! Gee up! What d’ee mean by stoppin’ like that?”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SERVICE OF THE LAMP.
The Chief Engineer of the Trinity House was a man of few words. He and Taffy had spent the afternoon clambering about the rocks below the light-house, peering into its foundations. Here and there, where weed coated the rocks and made foothold slippery, he took the hand which Taffy held out. Now and then he paused for a pinch of snuff. The round of inspection finished, he took an extraordinarily long pinch.
“What’s your opinion?” he asked, cocking his head on one side and examining the young man much as he had examined the light-house. “You have one, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir; but of course it doesn’t count for much.”
“I asked for it.”
“Well, then, I think, sir, we have wasted a year’s work; and if we go on tinkering we shall waste more.”