"Your pardon, good sir; I follow you into the carriage."
So off they set to examine my boat; and I hoped to see no more of them, for one thing was certain—to wit, that their coachman never would face the sandhills, and no road ever is, or ever can be, to Porthcawl; so that these two worthy gentlemen needs must exert their noble legs for at least one-half of the distance. And knowing that Squire Stew's soles were soft, I thought it a blessing for him to improve the only soft part about him.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT.
Highly pleased with these reflections, what did I do but take a pipe, and sit like a lord at my own doorway, having sent poor Bunny with a smack to bed, because she had shown curiosity: for this leading vice of the female race cannot be too soon discouraged. But now I began to fear almost that it would be growing too dark very soon for me to see what became of the carriage returning with those two worships. Moreover, I felt that I had no right to let them go so easily, without even knowing Sir Philip's surname, or what might be the especial craze which had led them to honour me so. And sundry other considerations slowly prevailed over me; until it would have gone sore with my mind, to be kept in the dark concerning them. So, when heavy dusk of autumn drove in over the notch of sandhills from the far-away of sea, and the green of grass was gone, and you hardly could tell a boy from a girl among the children playing, unless you knew their mothers; I rejoicing in their pleasures, quite forgot the justices. For all our children have a way of letting out their liveliness, such as makes old people feel a longing to be in with them. Not like Bardie, of course; but still a satisfactory feeling. And the better my tobacco grew, the sweeter were my memories.
Before I had courted my wife and my sweethearts (a dozen and a-half perhaps, or at the outside say two dozen) anything more than twice apiece, in the gentle cud of memory; and with very quiet sighs indeed, for echoes of great thumping ones; and just as I wondered what execution a beautiful child, with magnificent legs, would do when I lay in the churchyard—all of a heap I was fetched out of dreaming into common-sense again. There was the great yellow coach at the corner of the old grey wall that stopped the sand; and all the village children left their "hide-and-seek" to whisper. Having fallen into a different mood from that of curiosity, and longing only for peace just now, or tender styles of going, back went I into my own cottage, hoping to hear them smack whip and away. Even my hand was on the bolt—for a bolt I had now on account of the cats, who understand every manner of latch, wherever any fish be—and perhaps it is a pity that I did not shoot it.
But there came three heavy knocks; and I scarcely had time to unbutton my coat, in proof of their great intrusion, before I was forced to show my face, and beg to know their business.
"Now, Dyo, Dyo," said that damned Stew [saving your presence, I can't call him else]; "this is a little too bad of you! Retiring ere dusk! Aha! aha! And how many hours after midnight will you keep your hornpipes up, among the 'jolly sailors!' Great Davy, I admire you."