"Pullin' an' tuggin' at me," he said, "an' I was all right. I was only jus' lookin' over the edge. I'd have got back all right."
But the member of the crew made life hideous to Mrs. Brown.
"You know, lady," he muttered, "when I saved yer little boy's life, I give myself such a wrench. I can feel it in my innards now, as it were——"
Hastily she gave him ten shillings. Yet she could not stem the flow.
"I 'ope, lady," he would continue at intervals, "when that choild's growd to be a man, you'll think sometoimes of the poor ole man wot saved 'is life at the expense of 'is own innards, as you might say when 'e were a little 'un."
A speech like that always won half-a-crown. In the end Mrs. Brown spent her time avoiding him and fleeing whenever she saw him coming along the deck. When a meeting was inevitable she hastily gave him the largest coin she could find before he could begin on his "innards."
Meanwhile a passenger had discovered William neatly balanced through a porthole, and earned his undying hatred by hauling him in and depositing him upside down on the floor.
"Seems to me," said William to his mother, "that all these folks have come for is to stop other folks having a good time. What do you come on a boat for if you can't look at the sea—that's all I want to know?"
A gale rose, and Mrs. Brown, pale and distraught, sat huddled up on deck. William hovered round sympathetically.
"I got some chocolate creams in my other coat. Like some of them?"