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 of 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 told the Lunnon architec' so
when he come down to oversee my work.'

'What did he say?' Dan was sandpapering the schooner's port bow.

'Nothing. The Hall ain't more than one of his small jobs for him, but
'tain't small to me, an' my name is cut and lettered, frontin' the
village street, I do hope an' pray, for time everlastin'. You'll want
the little round file for that holler in her bow. Who's th