artled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on
his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head
lovingly laid against Cock's white and yellow poll, talking in a low
voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and as Miss
Betty justly feared, of that "other side of the world," which they both
knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.

Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a
wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long
intervals) his "restless times," when his good "misses" would bring out
a little store laid by in one of the children's socks, and would bid
him. "Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air," but on condition that
the sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to
go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his
absence with that confidence in her knowledge of the "master," which is
so mysterious to the unmarried, and which Miss Betty looked upon as
"want of feeling" to the end. She always dreaded that he would not
return, and a little ruse which she adopted of giving him money to make
bargains for foreign articles of _vertu_ with sailors, is responsible
for many of the choicest ornaments in the Lingborough parlour.

"The sock'll bring him home," said Mrs. Broom, and home he came, and
never could say what he had been doing. Nor was the account given by
Thomasina's cousin, who was a tide-waiter down yonder, particularly
satisfying to the women's curiosity. He said that John Broom was always
about; that he went aboard of all the craft in the bay, and asked whence
they came and whither they were bound. That being once taunted to do it,
he went up the rigging of a big vessel like a cat, and came down it
looking like a fool. That as a rule, he gossipped and shared his tobacco
with sailors and fishermen, and brought out the sock much oftener than
was prudent for the benefit of the ragged boys who haunt the quay.

He had two other weaknesses, which a faithful biographer must chronicle.

A regiment on the march would draw him from the plough-tail itself, and
"With daddy to see the pretty soldiers" was held to excuse any of Mrs.
Broom's children from household duties.

The other shall be described in the graphic language of that acute
observer the farm-bailiff.

"If there cam' an Irish beggar, wi' a stripy cloot him and a bellows
under 's arm, and ca'd himsel' a