oat-builder at Aldeburgh, and that
FitzGerald had, at first, wished Posh to employ him to build the _Mum
Tum_, as the _Meum and Tuum_ was fated to be called.

The kindly jovial relations between the "guv'nor" and his partner could
not be better indicated than by the name FitzGerald gives himself at the
close, just before he once more signs his name in full. Well, perhaps
the legal luminary of Lowestoft would justify his inquiry if Edward
FitzGerald was the man who made a lot of money out of salt by saying,
"Well, he called himself a herring-merchant."

The schoolmaster who had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar Khayyam
would (according to the nature of the breed) sniff and say "What? A
herring-merchant and a tent-maker! My boys are the sons of gentlemen. I
can't be expected to know anything about tradesfolk of that class."

But Posh has a sense of humour, and he says, "Ah! He used to laugh about
that, the guv'nor did. He'd catch hold o' my jersey, so" (here Posh
pinches up a fold of his blue woollen jersey), "and say, 'Oh dear! Oh
dear, Poshy! Two F's in the firm. FitzGerald and Fletcher, herring
salesmen--when Poshy catches any, which isn't as often as it might be,
you know, Poshy!' And then he'd laugh. Oh, he was a jolly kind-hearted
man if ever there was one."

And then Posh's eyes will grow moist sometimes, I think perhaps with the
thought that he might--ah, well! It's too late now.

Posh wishes me to give the dimensions of the lugger, as she was of his
own designing and proved a fast and stiff craft. He had given her two
feet less length than her beam called for, according to local ideas, and
FitzGerald called her "The Cart-horse," because she seemed broad and
bluff for her length. She was forty-five feet in length, with a fifteen-
foot beam and seven-foot depth. She was first rigged as a lugger, but
altered to the more modern "dandy" (something like a ketch but with more
rake to the mizzen and with no topmast on the mainmast) before she was
sold. Any one about the herring basins who has arrived at fisherman's
maturity (about sixty years) will remember the _Mum Tum_, and, so far as
she was concerned, the partnership was entirely successful, for no one
has a bad word to say for her.

CHAPTER V
"NEIGHBOUR'S FARE"

It is impossible to arrive at the exact sum of money which FitzGerald
brought into the partnership between him and Posh, but it must have been
something like five hundr