ace.

Then up and spake the caulkyers bold,
Which was packing the pump in the after-hold:
'Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly tell what your name might be?'

The old man kindly answered them:
'It might be Japhet, it might be Shem,
Or it might be Ham (though his skin was dark),
Whereas it is Noah, commanding the Ark.

'Your wheel is new and your pumps are strange,
But otherwise I perceive no change,
And in less than a week, if she did not ground,
I'd sail this hooker the wide world round!'

BOTH: _We tell these tales which are strictest true, etc._

The Wrong Thing

Dan had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled the
schoolroom with chips, which he expected Una to clear away, they turned
him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to Mr.
Springett's yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose.
Old Mr. Springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and
his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of
interesting things. At one end of it was a long loft, reached by a
ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold planks, tins of paints,
pulleys, and odds and ends he had found in old houses. He would sit here
by the hour watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard
below, while Dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter's bench near the
loft window. Mr. Springett and Dan had always been particular friends,
for Mr. Springett was so old he could remember when railways were being
made in the southern counties of England, and people were allowed to
drive dogs in carts.

One hot, still afternoon--the tar-paper on the roof smelt like
ships--Dan, in his shirt sleeves, was smoothing down a new schooner's
bow, and Mr. Springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. He
said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any man,
woman, or child he had ever met. Just then he was very proud of the
village Hall at the entrance to the village, which he had finished a few
weeks before.

'An' I don't mind tellin' you, Mus' Dan,' he said, 'that the Hall will
be my last job top of this mortal earth. I didn't make ten pounds--no,
nor yet five--out o' the whole contrac', but my name's lettered on the
foundation stone--_Ralph Springett, Builder_--and the stone she's bedded
on four foot good concrete. If she shifts any time these five hundred
years, I'll sure-ly turn in my grave. I