“Who is ‘daddy’?”
“Father,” said the boy. “He’ll lick me, for the tub’s his’n.”
Bertie was perplexed. He had heard of bears being licked into shape by their fathers and mothers, but this boy, though rough and rather shapeless, looked too old for such treatment.
“You were a wicked boy to use the boat, then,” he said, with great severity.
The lad only grinned.
“Little master, you tipped me a crown.”
“I did not mean to tempt you to do wrong,” said Bertie very seriously still; and then he colored, for was he very sure that he was not doing wrong himself?
The old boat was grinding on the shingle then, and the rower of it was putting him ashore at a little creek that was wooded and pretty, and up which the sea ran at high tide; there was a little cottage at the head of it. I have heard that this wood-glen used to be in the old time a very famous place for smugglers, and it is still solitary and romantic, or at least was so still when the little Earl was set down there. “Where am I?” he asked the boy. But the wicked boy only grinned, and began to wabble back through the water as fast as his long slashing strokes could carry him. The little Earl felt rather foolish and rather helpless.
He was not far on his way towards seeing the world, and he began to wish for some breakfast. There was smoke going out of a chimney of the cottage, and the door of it stood open, but he was afraid the people there might stop him if he asked for anything, and, besides, the path up to it through the glen looked rocky and thorny and impassable, so he kept along by the beach, finding it heavy walking, for there were more stones than sands, and the beach was strewn with rocks, large and small, and stiff prickly furze. But he had the sea beside him and the world before him, and he walked on bravely, and in a little while he came into Bonchurch. It was very early yet, and Bonchurch was asleep, and most of its snug thatched houses, hidden away in their gardens and fuchsia hedges, were shut up snugly; the tall trees of its one street made a deep shadow in it, and the broad placid water of its great pool was green with their reflection: it was a sweet, quiet place, leafy as any haunt for fairies, yet on the very edge of the sea.
At a baker’s shop, a woman was lifting down the shutters. The little Earl took his hat off very prettily and said to her,—