“From the pier; there was nowhere else they could be coming from. They wouldn’t have been fishing at this time of day.”
“Look here, Master Aleck, you mean it, don’t you? It wasn’t you as pitched something down?”
“Look here, Tom, do you want to put me in a passion?”
“No, sir, course I don’t.”
“Then don’t ask such idiotic questions. Of course I didn’t.”
“Then it was one of they chaps, Master Aleck.”
“Well, it does look like it now, Tom. But, nonsense! It must have been very heavy to go through the boat.”
“It weer, sir.”
“But why should anyone do that? You don’t think that a boy would have been guilty of such a bit of mischief as that?”
“What, Master Aleck?” cried the sailor, bursting into a loud guffaw. “Why, there arn’t anything they Rockabie boys wouldn’t do. Why, they’re himps, sir—reg’lar himps; and mischief arn’t half bad enough a word for what they’d do.”