'They two dogs, they be summat like a couple o' wild b'ys; they keeps the passon and the mistress in, not for to say hot water, but bilin' water, for the livelong day!' constantly declared Binks, who was the handy-man at the Vicarage, and, in fact, handy-man at the little church as well, he being both factotum and sexton. Binks was a worthy old soul whom the terriers led a troubled life by their destructive capers in the garden and lawn, which he vainly tried to keep trim. Still, on the whole, Binks, harassed as he was by the dogs, was apt to thank his stars that Splutters and Shutters were not actually boys; such boys, for instance, as those of the captain at the Bunk across the bay, who were a sore handful, as any one could see for themselves, without the prompt testimony of all Northbourne to that effect.
'You be a plaguey pair, you b'ys!' was the unfailing greeting of Binks, when he encountered Geoff and Alick Carnegy.
'Come, you shut up, Binks! You surely would not have us a couple of mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing boisterously the while.
'I dunno, young musters!' rejoined Binks, contemplating the ridiculous spectacle with much the same gravity as he would have regarded a funeral. 'P'raps it'd be a sight better if so be as you was gells. That is, gells after the pattern of your sister, Miss Theedory!'
'Oh, Theo! Well, she's different!' and Geoff sobered down his antics, and stood still to retort. 'That just reminds me I've brought a note for Mrs. Vesey from Theo. I'll run up to the house with it. I don't remember if it wants an answer; but don't you go away, Alick. Wait for me!'
'All right!' Alick nodded, and swinging himself up on the wall, he watched Binks, who was patiently pottering over the carrot-beds. The ceaseless tussel he had to induce these refractory vegetables to make a fair show was one of the minor crosses of the old man's life.
Of the two Carnegys, Alick was the least reasonable, if the word reasonable could be applied to either of 'them young limbs,' as Northbourne privately called the captain's boys. He, however, managed to sit still for the space of five minutes or so on the wall, whistling vigorously.
'I 'opes as you be a-gittin' on brisk with your book-larnin', Muster Alick?' Binks lifted his head, after the prolonged silence, to regard, with a critical air, the boy who sat dangling his feet above. Binks had a fashion peculiar to himself of staring at most people in a reproving manner, as though he had just found them out in some dark transgression. It was possibly a habit due to a lifelong experience of the faults and the failings of human nature, and it was one which stood Binks in good stead, giving him an austere and awe-inspiring appearance. Especially on Sundays did this detective air prove helpful, when he did duty as parish clerk in the quaint, old-time church on the shore, where it served to keep the small fisher-folk in proper order.
'Oh, bother!' said Alick shortly. 'We have enough of that sort of talk from old Price. He pegs away at us to get on, get on, until I'm sick of the sight of books, and pen and ink!'
'Ay?' Binks leaned on his spade, and, resting, stared fixedly up into the face of the boy-speaker. 'Sick of it, be you? And what be you supposin' as Muster Price feels? A deal sicker, I make no doubt, toiling and moiling every week-day as the sun rises on, a-tryin' to till sich unprofitable ground as your b'y-brains! I dunnot 'spose as you ever looked at it from his pint of view, did ye?'