The Captain's Bunk

hing that

's dull a

ecessary to take a railway journey as far as Brattlesby town, and then tramp the rest of

er of a long stretch of downs. It consisted of a few small thatched cottages that had seated themselves, as it were, in a semicircle round the tiny bay, t

Oddly enough, each of them finished off the half-circle of cottages,

old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers, and as tricky a pair as one could meet,

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

the unfailing greeting of Binks, when

round in this fashion, would you now?' And the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and do

h the same gravity as he would have regarded a funeral. 'P'raps it'd be a sight better if

t. 'That just reminds me I've brought a note for Mrs. Vesey from Theo. I'll run up to the hous

patiently pottering over the carrot-beds. The ceaseless tussel he had to induce these re

o either of 'them young limbs,' as Northbourne privately called the captain's boys. He, howeve

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,

rt of talk from old Price. He pegs away at us to get on, get

e 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-t

ther, though he had been, in the old days, skilled at commanding men, knew little or nothing of managing children. When his wife died and he retired from the service, he found his hands full, with the most unruly crew that he had ever encountered in his long naval career. Not gifted with much patience, he soon gave up trying to guide the helm of that unmanageable ship, his own home. Betaking himself to his

deal of forcibly put justice in the suggestive question of Binks, and for a few seconds Alick, nonplussed, kept silence, swin

ach. That's what he has got to do, you know!

maybe so! And, maybe also, who can tell, it's what the Lord has made you for likewise, Muster Alick. Time may

cheeks, and he glared back into the face of the bent

nd this one, bein' the youngest, and enjying terrible poor health, ain't fit for nothin' but teachin' b'ys. That's how he keeps the old lady and hisself in bread I've heard say. And if so be'-Binks straightened himself, and drew out his spade from the earth-'as I was him, I'd a deal rather break stones, or else try

ou'd to grind away, when the sun's shining and the sea dancing before your eyes, at rubbishy old Latin grammars and arithmetic, and all the rest of it, you'd be the first to grumble. Oh, I w

s any lark in the air, so when I came to be a man without no book-larnin' in the pockets o' my brain, I had to grope my way about in the world. Many's the time it's bin all dark, round and round, 'cept in the faces of other folk where I seed the light o' understandi

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