school--he walked out into the yard, in the unconfessed hope of finding
Lizzie there: and there she was, engaged in filling her apron with wood.

"Listen to me," he said--for the two by this time had, without parley,
grown into allies. "Your grandfather'll get along all right till he've
finished buildin'. But what's to happen when the boat's ready to launch?
Have you ever thought 'pon that?"

"Often an' often," said Lizzie.

"If 'twould even float--which I doubt--" said the Elder--"the dratted
thing couldn' be got down to the water, without pullin' down seven feet o'
wall an' the butt-end of Ugnot's pigsty."

"We must lengthen out the time," said the practical child. "Please God,
he'll die afore it's finished."

"You mustn' talk irreligious," said her elderly friend. "Besides, there's
nothin' amiss with him, settin' aside his foolishness. I've a-thought
sometimes, now, o' buildin' a boat down here, an', when the time came,
makin' believe to exchange. Boat-buildin' is slack just now, but I might
trust to tradin' her off on someone--when he'd done with her--which in the
natur' of things can't be long. I've a model o' the old _Pass By_ hangin'
up somewhere in the passage behind the shop. We might run her up in two
months, fit to launch, an' finish her at leisure, call her the _Pass By_,
and I daresay the Lord'll send along a purchaser in good time."

Lizzie shook her head. She would have liked to call Mr. Penno the best
man in the world; but luckily--for it would have been an untruth--she
found herself unequal to it.

V.

Their apprehensions were vain. The whole town had entered into the fun of
Tregenza's boat, and she was no sooner felt to be within measureable
distance of completion than committees--composed at first of the younger
fishermen (but, by and by, the elders joined shamefacedly), held informal
meetings, and devised a royal launch for her. What though she could not,
as Mr. Penno had foreseen, be extricated from the yard but at the expense
of seven feet of wall and the butt-end of Ugnot's pigsty? Half a dozen
young masons undertook to pull the wall down and rebuild it twice as
strong as before; and the landlord of Ugnot's, being interviewed, declared
that he had been exercised in mind for thirty years over the propinquity
of the pigsty and the dwelling-house, and would readily accept thirty
shillings compensation for all damage likely to be done.

Report of these preparations at length r