'Tis
a world o' ups and downs, this is.'

'Hilloa, Binks! Oh, I say!'

The old man wheeled round to find Geoff and Alick had unexpectedly
returned.

'Whatever's ado now? What's brought 'ee both back?' snapped the old
man crustily. The boys were anything but pleasant interruptions in his
eyes.

'Oh, we got tired waiting about for Jerry. He hasn't come yet. And
we've just seen our boat come into the pier, and we want it to go for a
row,' both boys spoke at once.

'Ye want the boat, do 'ee now? Well, then, ye can't get it, that's
all!' Binks faced round upon the boys, who were trying to push past
him and jump into the boat. 'Miss Theedory, she says, says she,
"Binks, I looks to you to see arter that boat for me!" and with that
she stepped up to the house, she and little missy, to see the mistress.
'Tain't likely I'm a-goin' to 'low her to find no boat waitin' for her,
bym-bye, when she's ready to go back 'ome. You jes' be off, young
musters!'

'That's all nonsense! It's no use of you showing fight. We mean to
have the boat. It's our boat, and Theo can walk home; do her good,
too.'

Alick spoke sullenly, and pushed past Binks on the slippery little
pier. But he reckoned without counting the cost. Binks, though
rheumatic and a trifle bent, still retained some of the strength that
had made him a byword as an athlete in his young days. With a touch of
angry red in his brown, wrinkled cheek, and a spark of wrath in his
deep-set eyes, he seized the boy neatly by the back of the collar and
the band of his Norfolk tweed jacket. It was useless for Alick to
splutter and howl and threaten. Old Binks swung him, as though he were
a kitten, over the edge of the pier, while Geoff fairly doubled up in a
wild ecstasy of laughter.

[Illustration: SWUNG HIM AS THOUGH HE WERE A KITTEN.]

'Tis this way I'll serve 'ee, if so be as you wants to, interfere wi'
me doin' of my dooty, young sir!' croaked out the sturdy old veteran.

'Let me down, I say, let me down! Oh, I'll pay you out!' screamed
Alick, maddened more by a sense of humiliation than of terror, for none
of the Carnegy name dreaded a ducking in the sea.

'There ye be, then!' Binks at last deposited his wriggling burden flat
on the pier. 'Now, p'raps ye'll understand the way an honest man
dispoges of obstructions in the path o' dooty! You're an obstruction,
you are, muster; and if so be as you lay the lesson to heart, the bit
o' teachin' on my part w