on the
cobbles.

CHAPTER IV.

CAPTAIN COFFIN STUDIES NAVIGATION.

Events soon to be narrated made my sojourn in tutelage of Mr. Stimcoe
a brief one, and I will pass it lightly over.

The school consisted of four boarders and six backward sons of
gentlemen resident in the town, and assembled daily in a large
outhouse furnished with desks of a peculiar pattern, known to us as
"scobs." Mr. Stimcoe, who had received his education as a
"querister" at Winchester (and afterwards as a "servitor" at Pembroke
College, Oxford), habitually employed and taught us to employ the
esoteric slang--or "notions," as he called it--of that great public
school; so that in "preces," "morning lines," "book-chambers," and
what-not we had the names if not the things, and a vague and quite
illusory sense of high connection, on the strength of which, and of
our freedom from what Mrs. Stimcoe called "the commercial taint," we
made bold to despise the more prosperous Rogerses up the hill.

Upon commerce in the concrete--that is to say, upon the butchers,
bakers, and other honest tradesmen of Falmouth--Mrs. Stimcoe waged a
predatory war, and waged it without quarter. She had a genius for
opening accounts, and something more than genius for keeping her
creditors at bay. She never wheedled nor begged them for time; she
never compromised nor parleyed, nor condescended to yield an inch to
their claims for decent human treatment. She relied simply upon
browbeating and the efficacy of the straight-spoken lie. A more
dauntless, unblushing, majestic liar never stood up in petticoats.

She was a byword in Falmouth; yet, strange to say, her victims kept a
sneaking fondness for her, a soft spot In their hearts; while as
sporting onlookers we boys took something like a fearful pride in the
Warrior, as we called her. It was not in her nature to encourage any
such weakness, or to use it. She would not have thanked us for it.
But we had this amount of excuse: that she fed us liberally when she
could browbeat the butcher; and if at times we went short, she shared
our privation. Also, there must have been some good in the woman, to
stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe. Stimcoe's books had gone into
storage at the pawnbroker's; but in his bare "study," where he heard
our construing of Caesar and Homer, stood a screen, and behind it an
eighteen-gallon cask. A green baize tablecloth covered the cask from
sight, and partially muffled the sound of its