ou go away, Alick. Wait for
me!'

'All right!' Alick nodded, and swinging himself up on the wall, he
watched Binks, who was patiently pottering over the carrot-beds. The
ceaseless tussel he had to induce these refractory vegetables to make a
fair show was one of the minor crosses of the old man's life.

Of the two Carnegys, Alick was the least reasonable, if the word
reasonable could be applied to either of 'them young limbs,' as
Northbourne privately called the captain's boys. He, however, managed
to sit still for the space of five minutes or so on the wall, whistling
vigorously.

'I 'opes as you be a-gittin' on brisk with your book-larnin', Muster
Alick?' Binks lifted his head, after the prolonged silence, to regard,
with a critical air, the boy who sat dangling his feet above. Binks
had a fashion peculiar to himself of staring at most people in a
reproving manner, as though he had just found them out in some dark
transgression. It was possibly a habit due to a lifelong experience of
the faults and the failings of human nature, and it was one which stood
Binks in good stead, giving him an austere and awe-inspiring
appearance. Especially on Sundays did this detective air prove
helpful, when he did duty as parish clerk in the quaint, old-time
church on the shore, where it served to keep the small fisher-folk in
proper order.

'Oh, bother!' said Alick shortly. 'We have enough of that sort of talk
from old Price. He pegs away at us to get on, get on, until I'm sick
of the sight of books, and pen and ink!'

'Ay?' Binks leaned on his spade, and, resting, stared fixedly up into
the face of the boy-speaker. 'Sick of it, be you? And what be you
supposin' as Muster Price feels? A deal sicker, I make no doubt,
toiling and moiling every week-day as the sun rises on, a-tryin' to
till sich unprofitable ground as your b'y-brains! I dunnot 'spose as
you ever looked at it from his pint of view, did ye?'

Certainly Alick never had. It was a new idea to him to wonder how poor
Philip Price, the tutor, liked walking every day, rain or shine, over
from Brattlesby, the little inland town some three miles off, in order
to teach Geoff and himself just so much and no more as either of the
unruly brothers chose to learn; for the Carnegy boys were 'kittle
cattle,' as the North-country folk say, to deal with. Their father,
though he had been, in the old days, skilled at commanding men, knew
little or nothing of managing c