bay at one another, face to face.

One of the two, the Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an
elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless
boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of
Mr. Vesey, the good 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, ever up to their eyes in
mischief from morning until night. Indeed, Splutters and Shutters kept
what would have been a still, staid household in nearly as great a
ferment as did the captain's crew the Bunk across the bay.

'They two dogs, they be summat like a couple o' wild b'ys; they keeps
the passon and the mistress in, not for to say hot water, but bilin'
water, for the livelong day!' constantly declared Binks, who was the
handy-man at the Vicarage, and, in fact, handy-man at the little 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 to thank his
stars that Splutters and Shutters were not actually boys; such boys,
for instance, as those of the captain at the Bunk across the bay, who
were a sore handful, as any one could see for themselves, without the
prompt testimony of all Northbourne to that effect.

'You be a plaguey pair, you b'ys!' was the unfailing greeting of Binks,
when he encountered Geoff and Alick Carnegy.

'Come, you shut up, Binks! You surely would not have us a couple of
mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And
the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle
below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing boisterously the
while.

'I dunno, young musters!' rejoined Binks, contemplating the ridiculous
spectacle with much the same gravity as he would have regarded a
funeral. 'P'raps it'd be a sight better if so be as you _was_ gells.
That is, gells after the pattern of your sister, Miss Theedory!'

'Oh, Theo! Well, she's different!' and Geoff sobered down his antics,
and stood still to retort. 'That just reminds me I've brought a note
for Mrs. Vesey from Theo. I'll run up to the house with it. I don't
remember if it wants an answer; but don't y