“Is that your little ship out there?” I asked, for lack of anything better.
“Lor’ bless ’ee, no, sir,” he answered, heartily, but in a sort of breathless way. “What makes ’ee think so?”
“Weren’t you coming from it?”
“Me!” He protested, with a panting chuckle. “Jole Rampick own that there little tender beauty! I’d skipped out fur my morning dip, sir—if you must know. A wonderful bracing water this—if folks would only credit it.”
His unshorn dusky face was not, I could not help thinking, the best testimony to its cleansing properties. But I kept my wisdom to myself, and turned to go back to the inn. Mr. Rampick volunteered his company, and on the way some instructive information.
“Aye,” he panted huskily; “man and boy fur nigh on fifty year have I known this here Abbot’s Dunberry, but never—till three months ago—the healing vartues of its brine.”
“Who told you of them?” I asked.
“The Lord,” he answered, showing the under-whites of his eyes a moment. “The Lord, sir, through his minister the parson—that’s Mr. Sant. Benighted we were—and ignorant—till the light was vouchsafed us; and parson he revealed the Bethesda lying at our very doors.”
“What’s Bethesda?” I had, I am sorry to say, to ask.
“A blessed watering-place,” he said—“I’m humbly surprised, sir; like as parson calc’lates to make of this here, if the Almighty will condescend to convart our former wickedness to our profit.”