Mr. Pim owed his influence, not to any physical force, though he was the tallest and stoutest man within five miles; nor to wealth, for he professed to have nothing but his village day-school to support his family upon; nor to any connexion with the great, for he was a bluff, homely personage, who did not want or care for anybody's favours; nor to his own superior wit, for no one was aware of his being remarkably endowed in this way. It was partly that he had given to his neighbours all the book-learning that they could boast of, and the little religion that they professed. It was yet more that he had been a long resident with his family, after having early buried his wife among them. But, above all, it was his merry heart, making itself understood by a voice mighty enough to out-bellow the waves at Beachy Head, that was the charm of Mr. Pim. He liked to be told that he should have been a preacher, with such a voice as his, and would forthwith enact the reverend gentleman for a minute or two; but he could never make his splendid voice bring out any thing but little jokes with small wit in them; for the good reason that his brain would supply nothing else. Nothing more was necessary, however, to constitute him the most popular man within his sphere.
"Hi, hi! what is all this about?" was the question that came travelling through the air, as soon as his tall form became visible, approaching from the houses. "What are you buzzing about here for, when your young one is toasting at home, as dry as the cod-sounds that hang over his head? Toasting! aye, at my fire. I met him dripping like a duck, and he would have slunk away; but it was up with him this way;" and he seized upon a boy standing near, and threw him across his shoulder, twisting him about with one hand as if he had been a doll. "This way I carried him home, unwilling enough, to my Rebecca. 'Here, Beck,' says I, 'take him and toast him till I come back to give him a flogging.' And now he is expecting me, so I must be off, as soon as you will please to give over quarrelling, and march home. Flog him! ay, to be sure, for disturbing these men at their duty. It is a fine thing, you gipsy gentlemen, to have put your young folks under the rod; and it would be a thousand pities not to use it. You can't get the impish spirit out of them all in a day."
"But has the boy done wrong?" inquired Mrs. Storey. "Even if he has, he has surely been punished enough."
"Not while ill blood is left, my lady. I never leave off punishing my boys till they laugh with me, and it is all right again. If Mr. Faa will undertake to make his boy laugh as much as he cried half an hour ago, he is welcome to go and fetch him away. But then there must be an end of this silly business. You, sir," to Brady, "thrust your pistol into your pocket, or I will help you to chuck it deeper into the sea than you can go to fetch it."
Brady looked as angry now as the gipsies had done when they heard that Uriah was to be flogged; but neither party could long withstand Pim's authoritative style of good humour. He ended with making everybody laugh, turning the attention of the guard seawards, dispersing the group of complainers in different directions, and adjourning the quarrel, if he could not dissolve it. As he attended the lady to the station-house, he explained to her the little hope there was of establishing a good understanding between the Coast Guard and the country people.
"I pity the poor fellows down below, with all my heart," said he, turning from the first point of the ascent to observe the guard, now again loitering along the margin. "Not so much for being out in the cold, though they slap themselves with their swinging arms like yon flag in a high wind. It is not for the cold I pity them, since a young lady keeps them company in it."
"I seldom stay within all day, especially when Miss Storey is with me," replied Matilda; "but I would not promise to bear this cold for six hours; and I do pity those poor men very much."
"So do I, madam, because they moreover meet cold looks at every turn; which you, not being a spy, will never do."
"But these men are spies only upon those who break the laws. You do not mean that the innocent are not glad to be watched?"
Pim looked sly while he said he knew but of one innocent in all the neighbourhood, and he happened to be among the spies, and so was very popular. Mrs. Storey would go deeper than the pun, however, and asked whether the neighbours generally had need to fear the enforcement of the law.