Would we pass the doctor with flying colours? Well, we were hardy and healthy, though at that time of no extra physique. We must get stronger somehow. Auntie consulted the family doctor, she herself suggesting “dumb-bells.” The doctor’s reply was—“Fiddlesticks, madam, fiddlesticks,”—for doctors do not like other people, especially female-people, to put words in their mouths. But auntie was a little discomposed at the brusque mention of “fiddlesticks.”
“What then would you suggest, sir?” she said, pompously.
The doctor simply pointed with his forefinger first at the green hills and cliffs, then at the sea, took up his hat and marched out of the room, curtly bowing her “good morning” as he turned in the doorway.
Now, whom should we find in earnest confab with auntie next forenoon but Bill Moore, the ship keeper.
Jill and I at once beat a discreet retreat.
I must tell you a little more about Bill. He had not always been simply Bill Moore, but Mr Moore. He had, first and foremost as a young man, taken honours in classics and mathematics at a northern university, then gone straight “to the dogs”—so they said. When he in some measure recovered himself—war being then going on—he had joined the service (Royal Navy) as a man ready and willing to turn his hand to anything. Well, they were not so particular in those days; they would not refuse bone and muscle in whatever shape it came, and Bill had been a handsome fellow in his day. He got on in the service, and though he soon became an A.B., and really preferred to be before the mast, he was rated schoolmaster for many years, but finally received an appointment as coast-guardsman, and latterly, as we know, keeper of the hulk, with a fairly good pension.
He took a great fancy for us, and as somehow or other auntie had an acute and undying aversion to public schools, when Mr Bill Moore proposed we should come to the hulk and be drilled by him physically and mentally, she felt greatly inclined to accede. Hence the present interview.
“Perhaps they might do better at a public school, Miss, than with me, but—”
“I won’t hear of a public school,” auntie cut in with, curtly.
“Well, Miss, we have a mast and ratlins on my old tub; I would take care they were well drilled and had plenty of exercise, my wife will look after their internal comforts, and I can insure their passing their examinations in a year or two.”