"Right you are, Dick; besides, they are as slippery as eels. Who can tell what they have got under their lime or manure? Short of unloading it to the bottom there would be no finding it, if they had anything; and it is a job that I should not care for. Besides, there aint no place to empty it on; and we could not go and chuck a cargo overboard unless we were quite certain that we should find something underneath. As you say, I dare say Bill runs a keg or two now and then, but I don't suppose that he is worse than his neighbors; I have always suspected that it was he who left a keg of whisky at our door last Christmas."
In the meantime Bill had overtaken his barge, and they soon had her alongside of the little wharf at Pitsea.
"Tide is just turning. She will be aground in half an hour," he said. "As soon as you have got these mooring ropes fastened, you had better fry that steak and have your supper. I shall be over by seven o'clock in the morning. If Harvey and Wilson come alongside before that, tell them they can have the job at the usual price, and can set to work without waiting for me. It will be pretty late before I am in bed to-night."
It was over a mile walk back to his cottage. As soon as he arrived he sat down to a hearty supper which his wife had prepared for him. He then got three pack-saddles out of the cellar, put them on the horses, and fastened four kegs on each horse. Tying one behind the other, he started, and in an hour the kegs were stowed in the cellars of four farmers near Stanford. It was midnight before he returned home. At half-past six he was down to breakfast.
"Well, uncle, how are you?" he asked the child, who was already up.
"I am not your uncle," the boy replied; "you are my uncle."
"Ah, well, it's a way of speaking down here. It does not mean that anyone is one's uncle; it is just a way of speaking."
The child nodded. He was learning many things.
"Then it is a way of speaking when I call you uncle?"
"No, no! That is different. A child like you would not call anyone uncle unless he was uncle; while a man my age calls anyone uncle."