y are the backbone of the Navy.

VII

SEACOMBE,
_November_.

1

Whilst the train was drawing up at the platform, I noticed the people
moving and looking downwards as if dogs were running wild amongst them.
Then I saw two whitish heads bobbing about in the crowd. It was Jimmy
and another boy come to meet me.

We gave the luggage to the busman, and walked on down.

"Tommy's gone tu Plymouth."

"What for?"

"They'm going to cut his eyes out an' gie 'en spectacles."

"When did he go?"

A rather sulky silence....

Then: "Us thought 'ee was going to ride down. Dad said as yu'd be sure
tu."

"'Tisn't far to walk, Jimmy...."

"Us be tired."

Alack! I had done the wrong thing. Their little festivity, that was to
have made them the envy of 'all they boys tu beach,' had fallen flat.
They had expected to ride down 'like li'l gentry-boys.' However, we
bought oranges, and then I was taken to see yesterday's fire, and was
told how Tony had rushed into the blazing house to rescue a carpet 'an'
didn' get nort for it.'

Tony himself came downstairs from putting away an hour in bed. "I'd ha'
come up to meet 'ee," he said sleepily, "if anybody'd a reminded me
o'it. Us an't done nort to the fishing since you went away."

"An' yu an't chopped up to-morrow morning's wude nuther!" added Mrs
Widger.

Grannie Pinn came in at tea-time. We invited her to sit down and have a
cup. "Do 'ee think I an't got nothing to eat at home?" she asked.
"Well, I have, then!--Ay," she continued, bobbing her head
sententiously, "yu got a mark in Seacombe, else yu wuden't be down yer
again so sune. That's what 'tis--a mark! I knows, sure nuff. Come on!
who be it now? What's her like, eh?"

She cannot understand how any young unmarried man can be without his
sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in
search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual
old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and
poverty-stricken....

"There! if I don't come round and box yer yers. Yu'm al'ays ready wi'
yer chake."

[Sidenote: _A MARK_]

Then I offered her five _per cent._ of the lady's fortune, if she
would find me a mark with unsettled money. Though she laughed it off,
she was not a little scandalized by my levity. The Tough Old Stick has
not outlived her memory of r