"Well, sir, I know as I need tell you more about it. You can imagine how I quite broke down, like a great baby, and called myself every kind of name, saying only that I thought, and I a'most think so now, that I had been somehow mad from the moment the squall struck the Kate till the time I first met the little girls.
"When I thought o' that, and how I'd cut that poor gal to her drowning heart with my words, I could ha' knelt to her if she'd ha' let me. At last, when I was quiet, she explained that this cottage and its furniture and the Grateful Mary was all for me; and we'd a great fight over it, and I only gave in when at last she says that if I didn't do as she wanted she'd never come down to Scarborough with the little ladies no more; but that if I 'greed they'd come down regular every year, and that the little girls should go out sailing with me regular in the Grateful Mary.
"Well, sir, there was no arguing against that, was there? So here I am; and next week I expect Miss Mary that was, with her husband, who's a Parliament man, as she was engaged to be married to at the time of the upset, and my little ladies, who is getting quite big girls too. And if you hadn't been going away I'd ha' sailed round the castle tower, and I'd ha' pointed out the cottage to you. Yes, sir, I see what you are going to ask. I found it lonely there; and I found the widow of a old mate of mine who seemed to think as how she could make me comfortable; and comfortable I am, sir—no words could say how comfortable I am; and do you know, sir, I'm blest if there aint a Joe up there at this identical time, only he's a very little one, and has got both arms. So you see, sir, I have got about as little right as has any chap in this mortial world to the name of Surly Joe."
A FISH-WIFE'S DREAM.
Falmouth is not a fashionable watering-place. Capitalists and speculative builders have somehow left it alone, and, except for its great hotel, standing in a position, as far as I know, unrivaled, there have been comparatively few additions to it in the last quarter of a century. Were I a yachtsman I should make Falmouth my headquarters: blow high, blow low, there are shelter and plenty of sailing room, while in fine weather there is a glorious coast along which to cruise—something very different from the flat shores from Southampton to Brighton. It is some six years since that I was lying in the harbor, having sailed round in a friend's yacht from Cowes. Upon the day after we had come in my friend went into Truro, and I landed, strolled up, and sat down on a bench high on the seaward face of the hill that shelters the inner harbor.
An old coastguardsman came along. I offered him tobacco, and in five minutes we were in full talk.
"I suppose those are the pilchard boats far out there?"