"Oh! he's my cousin."
"Now, if you'd said uncle, sir—"
"Well, he's my mother's cousin; my second cousin, I suppose."
"Not having any myself, I don't know second from first. Howsomever, as I were saying, I've give up the fishing now; but I keep to the gardening—not an easy job with this stump of mine, 'cos when I'm digging the misbehaving thing will sink in, and it takes a terrible time to be always heaving it out. Like as if you was to have to drop anchor and heave it again every knot you made. But I've got over that there little contrariness by taking a square bit of board with me now. When I'm going to dig, down goes the board, I sticks my stump on that, and so we gets on as merry as you please, 'cos when I want to shift, all I've got to do is to kick the board along a few inches, and there we are."
"Well, but how came you to know me?"
"Only seed you, sir. I was over at Wynport, as I were saying, and only this morning I comed across my old messmate, Ben Babbage, what was pressed along o' me. He's now bo'sun of the Fury, and we was having a smoke and a chat about old times when you come down the yard along o' the lieutenant, and Ben says to me: 'Joe,' says he, 'that's Mr. Hardy, the new midshipman.' That's how I knowed your name, but I didn't know as how you was cousin to squire, though to be sure, now I look at you, sir, you do seem to have something of his figurehead about you."
"Talking of figureheads, that's a queer-looking thing yonder."
He pointed to a tower that just showed above the trees in the distance. In shape it was not unlike a mushroom, the top and part of the stalk being visible.
"That?" said Gumley. "Queer, indeed. That be Congleton's Folly."
"And who was Congleton?"