"Here she had evidently finished what she had heard her mamma say, for her forehead got smooth again, and she began to fill my pockets with sand.
"'It don't sound likely, missy, that doesn't,' I says. 'It don't stand to reason nohow. You can't have understood what mamma said.'
"'Mamma said it over and over again, lots of time,' Nina said. 'Nina quite sure she said right.'
"We didn't say no more about it then, though after the children had gone I wondered to myself how a chap could go on so foolish as that. Well, sir, three days after come round from Whitby this very boat, the Grateful Mary. She was sent care of Joe Denton; and as that was me, I had her hauled up on the beach till I should hear whose she was. Several visitors that had been out with me had said, promiscuous like, that they should like to have a boat of their own, and I supposed they had bought her at Whitby and sent her down, though why they should have sent her to my care I couldn't quite see.
"Two days afterwards them children come down, and says:
"'We want you to go through the town to the other cliff with us, Joe.'
"'I can't,' says I. 'I'm all right talking to you here, missies; but I shouldn't be a credit to you in the town, and your pa wouldn't be best pleased if he was to see you walking about in the streets with a boatman.'
"'Papa said we might ask you, Joe.'
"I shook my head, and the little ladies ran off to their nurse, who come back with them and says:
"'Master told me to say he should be pertickler glad if you would go with the young ladies.'