"But you're not sure of that, you know," he urged. Hereat Tilda found the excuse she wanted for losing her temper (for her falsehood—or, rather, the boy's pained disapproval of it—yet shamed her).
"'Oo brought yer 'ere, I'd like to know? And where'd yer be at this moment if 'twasn't for me an' 'Dolph? In Glasson's black 'ole, that's where yer'd be! An' now sittin' 'ere so 'igh-an'-mighty, an' lecturin'!"
The boy's eyes had filled with tears.
"But I'm not—I'm not!" he protested. "Tilda!—"
"As if," she jerked out between two hard, dry sobs (Tilda, by the way, never wept)—"as if I wasn' sure, after chasin' Bill all this way on purpose, and 'im the best of men!"
Just at this moment there emerged from the after-companion of the Severn Belle, immediately below them, a large head shaped like an enormous pear—shaped, that is, as if designed to persuade an upward passage through difficult hatchways, so narrow was the cranium and so extremely full the jowl. It was followed by a short bull neck and a heavy pair of shoulders in a shirt of dirty grey flannel; and having emerged so far, the apparition paused for a look around. It was the steersman of yesterday afternoon.
"'Ullo, below there!" Tilda hailed him.
"'Ullo yerself!" The man looked up and blinked. "W'y, if you ain't the gel and boy?"
"Where's Bill?" she asked, cutting him short.
"Bill?"