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one out there by a sudden thought of Mr. Mildmay's, the Portscale clergyman I told you of, who had mentioned in talking that he had not been there for some time. 'And it is a very fine mild day,' he said. 'It doesn't take twenty minutes in a boat. If you don't think it would hurt you, Mr. Vane?' Mr. Vane was delighted. There was a good deal of the boy about him still; he loved anything in the shape of a bit of fun, and he loved boating. So off the two came, and were most pleasantly welcomed by old Tobias and his second-in-command at the lighthouse. And by another happy chance, just as Biddy began to wade, Mr. Vane had come to the side of the lantern-room looking over in her direction. 'What can that be, moving slowly through that bit of water?' he said to Tobias. 'I am rather near-sighted. Is it a porpoise?' 'Nay, nay, sir, not at this season,' replied the old man; 'besides it's far too shallow for anything like that, though there is a deepish hole near the middle.' He strolled across to where Mr. Vane was standing as he spoke, and stared out where his visitor pointed to. Then suddenly he flung open one of the glazed doors and stepped on to the round balcony--perhaps that is not the right word to use for a lighthouse, but I do not know any other--outside, followed by Mr. Vane. Just then Biddy's screams came shrilly through the clear afternoon air, for it was a still day, and out at the lighthouse, when there was no noise of wind and waves, there was certainly nothing else to disturb the silence except perhaps the cry of a sea-gull overhead, or now and then the sound of the fishermen's voices as they passed by in their boats. And just now the waves were a long way out and the winds were off I know not where--all the better for the poor silly child, who, having got herself into this trouble, could do nothing but scream shrilly and yet more shrilly in her terror. Old Tobias turned and looked at Mr. Vane. 'It's a child, 'pon my soul, it's a child,' he exclaimed, and he sprang inside again and made for the ladder leading downstairs. But quick as he was, his visitor was before him. People talk of the miraculous quickness of a mother's ears; a father's, I think, are sometimes quite as acute, and Bridget's father loved dearly his self-willed, tiresome, queer-tempered little girl. Long before he got to the top of the ladder he knew more than old Tobias, more than any of them--Mr. Mildmay or young Williams, the othe
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