“Ah, them’s more like it, little ’un,” cried the big fisherman. “No more sea-blisters now, thanks to the ladies on shore,” he added, as he drew the soft mittens over his sadly scarred wrists.
“Now then, who wants this?” continued Fink, holding up a worsted helmet; “splendid for the back o’ the head and neck, with a hole in front to let the eyes and nose out.”
“Hand over,” cried David Duffy.
“I say, wot’s this inside?” exclaimed one of the men, drawing a folded paper from one of his mittens and opening it.
“Read, an’ you’ll maybe find out,” suggested the mate.
“‘God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy,’” said the fisherman, reading from the paper.
“Just so,” said Fink, “that’s what the lady as made the mitts wants to let you know so’s you may larn to think more o’ the Giver than the gifts.”
“I wish,” said another of the men testily, as he pulled a tract from inside one of his mitts, and flung it on the deck, “I wish as how these same ladies would let religion alone, an’ send us them things without it. We want the mitts, an’ comforters, an’ helmets, but we don’t want their humbuggin’ religion.”
“Shame, Dick!” said David Duffy, as he wound a comforter round his thick neck. “You shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. We’re bound to take the things as they’ve been sent to us, an’ say ‘Thank ’ee.’”
“If it wasn’t for what you call ‘humbuggin’ religion,’” remarked Fink, looking Dick straight in the face, “it’s little that we’d see o’ comforters, or books, or mission ships on the North Sea. Why, d’ee think that selfishness, or greed, or miserliness, or indifference, or godlessness would ever take the trouble to send all them things to us? Can’t you understand that the love of God in the heart makes men and women wish to try to keep God’s commandments by bein’ kind to one another, an’ considering the poor, an’ feedin’ the hungry, an’ clothin’ the naked?”