e
wanting another, and I shouldn't be happy if I didn't treat you in
return, and I've got something else to do with my money instead of
spending it on liquor."

I never saw him angry except when hard pressed by an ill-judging friend
to step into a public-house.

"Would you like to see Jack Trawl's son in a ragged shirt, without shoes
to his feet, and his daughter a beggar-girl, or something worse? Then
don't be asking me, mate, to take a drop of the poisonous stuff. I know
what I used to be, and I know what I should be again if I was to listen
to you!" he exclaimed. "Stand out of my way, now! Stand out of my way!
Come along, Peter," and, grasping my hand with a grip which made my
fingers crack, he stumped along the Hard as fast as he could move his
timber toe.

It was a pleasure on getting home to find Mary looking bright and
cheerful, with her work or books before her, and Nancy busy preparing
supper. The old man and I always took our dinner with us--generally a
loaf of bread, with a piece of cheese or bacon or fried fish, and
sometimes Irish stew in a basin, done up in a cloth, and a stone bottle
of water. I remember saying that I was born with a wooden spoon in my
mouth, but when I come to reflect what excellent parents I had, and what
true friends I found in Tom Swatridge and Nancy, I may say that, after
all, it must have been of silver, though perhaps not quite so polished
as those found in the mouths of some infants.

Another change in my life was about to occur. We had taken off a
gentleman from Gosport. From his way of speaking, we found that he was
a foreigner, and he told us that he wanted to be put on board a foreign
ship lying at Spithead.

"Is dere any danger?" he asked, looking out across the Channel, and
thinking what a long distance he had to go.

"Not a bit, sir," answered Tom, for the water was as smooth as a
mill-pond. There was a light air from the southward, and there was not
a cloud in the sky. "We might cross the Channel to France for that
matter, with weather like this."

"Oh no, no! I only want to get to dat sheep out dere!" cried the
foreigner, fancying that we might carry him across against his will.

"Certainly, mounseer; we'll put you aboard in a jiffy as soon as we gets
a breeze to help us along," said Tom.

We pulled round Blockhouse Point, along shore, till we came off Fort
Monkton, when opening Stokes Bay, the wind hauling a little to the
westward, we made sail and