is heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the
simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,--it is one of the sights
of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small
boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when he
is angry--and then in a torrent of thrashing words. He communicates his
good-will by smiling all over his face with a tinge of mockery in his
eyes and the bend of his long neck; whether mockery at oneself or at
things in general is not evident. (It is mainly, I think, by smiling at
one another that we remain the very good friends we are.) In any
discussion, his "Do as yu'm minded then!" is his signal for making
others do as _he_ is minded. The advantages possessed by him--health,
strength, clear-headedness, and good looks--he knows how to use, and
that without scruple. He is never hustled by man or circumstance;
seldom gives himself away; and seldom acknowledges an obligation. What
one might reasonably expect him to do in return for help or even
payment, he carelessly, deliberately, leaves undone, and performs
instead some particularly nice action when it is least of all
anticipated. His opinion is respected less because it is known, than
because it isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack
football team he adds to his prestige here. "What du John say?" is
often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without
gratitude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort
of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. "There's
more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked," I
heard Granfer say over his beer one day. "The way they used to get he
to take 'em out bathing in a boat.... Put 'en under the starn-sheets, I
s'pose--he-he-he-he-he! But they real ladies du tire o' gen'lemen
sometimes. Some on 'em had rather have a strong fellow like John. He
married out o' the likes o' us, as 'twas. Her what he married used to
eat wi' the gen'leman's family what her come'd yer with; sort o'
companion-nurse her was."

[Sidenote: _A NICE DISTINCTION_]

Once, when the _Moondaisy_ was mine, John charged me sixpence for
putting me ashore from the steamer, after he had been earning money
with my boat that very same day. There is no meanness in his face, and
I wondered who had taught him so to distinguish between the borrowing
of a private boat and the use of a craft that was on the beach for
hire-