“Oh!” said Maggie, her pity more than ever roused for the object of her interest: “does he have to walk on this little bit of a place with nothing to amuse him, and can’t even talk? I think that is pretty hard: I never could do it.”
“But if he were talking and chatting with every one who came along, and thinking only of his own amusement, he would forget his work and have his attention taken off from those plates which it is his business to watch constantly,” said the captain.
“And then we’d be blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” said Maggie.
“Not as bad as that, I hope,” said Captain Brooks, smiling; “but something might readily go wrong before he perceived it.”
“It seems like watching conscience all the time for fear we do something naughty,” said Bessie, who had been thoughtfully regarding the man since she last spoke. “If we forget conscience, or don’t pay attention where it points, we can be naughty before we know it.”
“Just so,” said the captain, looking at her half in amusement, half in surprise; “but tell me, little one, do you find some moral lesson in every thing?”
“I don’t know what ‘moral’ is, sir,” said Bessie, demurely; “but I think that man is a pretty good lesson to us.”
Here roguish Lily, for whom the prospect of being “blown up or burnt up or drowned or something,” did not seem to have any terrors, and who had been all this time trying to distract the watchman’s attention by shaking her head and finger at him, flirting her pocket-handkerchief, and giving little squeaks and “hems,” all without any avail, suddenly astonished him and accomplished her object, by firing a paper pellet which hit him directly between the eyes. The gruff old fellow only gave her a growl in return, however, and recommenced his pacing up and down; but Lily went capering about in an ecstasy of delight at her unlooked-for success, till the captain, who could not help laughing, called her to order with,—
“Here, here, you elf! have done with your monkey tricks, or I shall shut you up in a cage till we get to shore.”