I stared for a moment, he was so foreign-looking with his clipped beard and quaintly cut garb. Then I realised who it was: Binnacle Bill come back to his old wife, Mother Bonnet.
“Couldn’t leave the master before,” he said. “But now I’ve come, and you’ll give me a job now and then, and Master Bigley, I should like never to go away no more.”
Binnacle Bill did not go away any more, for he was at once installed boatman, and bound to have boat, tackle, and baits ready every time Bigley and I felt disposed to have an hour or two’s fishing in the evening.
If Bob Chowne came down his work grew harder, for Bob was as fond of fishing as ever. He used to come to see his father sometimes, for he was devotedly attached to him, and the old doctor’s place was full of the presents his son sent him from abroad.
But Bob always came over to the Bay, grumbling and saying that he was sick of Ripplemouth; and then he grumbled at old Sam and Kicksey about the dinner, or the fruit, or the weather, and then he used to grumble at his two old school-fellows as we walked along the cliff path, or went out with him in the boat.
“Ah, you two always were lucky fellows,” he said to us one day, when I told him that I was going to spend my winter evenings setting down my old recollections with Bigley Uggleston’s help. “Nothing to do but enjoy yourselves, and idle, and write. But what’s the good of doing that? Nobody will ever care to read about what such chaps as we’ve been, did in such an out-of-the-way place as this.”
“Never mind,” I said, “I mean to set it all down just as I can recollect; and as to anybody reading it—well, we shall see.”
“Ah, well,” said Bob, “just as you like; but if I was a grumbling sort of fellow, and given to finding fault, I should say it’s just waste of time.”
This was too much for Bigley, who burst into a hearty fit of laughter, in which I joined.
Bob stared at us both rather sulkily for a moment, and then uttered his favourite ejaculation, which was “Yah!”