" interrupted Mr. Boom, "it's quite diff'rent Now, you'd
best get aboard your craft and do your duty. There's more young men won
girls' 'arts while doing of ther duty than--than--if they wasn't doing
their duty. Do you understand me?"

It is inadvisable to quarrel with a prospective father-in-law, so that
Tarrell said he did, and with a moody nod tumbled into his boat and
put off to the smack. Mr. Boom having walked up and down a bit, and
exchanged a few greetings, bent his steps in the direction of the "Jolly
Sailor," and, ordering two mugs of ale, set them down on a small bench
opposite his old friend Raggett.

"I see young Tarrell go off grumpy-like," said Raggett, drawing a mug
towards him and gazing at the fast-receding boats.

"Ay, we'll have to do what we talked about," said Boom slowly. "It's
opposition what that gal wants. She simply sits and mopes for the want
of somebody to contradict her."

"Well, why don't you do it?" said Raggett. "That ain't much for a father
to do surely."

"I hev," said the other slowly, "more than once. O' course, when
I insist upon a thing, it's done; but a woman's a delikit creeter,
Raggett, and the last row we had she got that ill that she couldn't get
up to get my breakfast ready, no, nor my dinner either. It made us both
ill, that did."

"Are you going to tell Tarrell?" inquired Raggett.

"No," said his friend. "Like as not he'd tell her just to curry favour
with her. I'm going to tell him he's not to come to the house no more.
That'll make her want him to come, if anything will. Now there's no use
wasting time. You begin to-day."

"I don't know what to say," murmured Raggett, nodding to him as he
raised the beer to his lips.

"Just go now and call in--you might take her a nosegay."

"I won't do nothing so damned silly," said Raggett shortly.

"Well, go without 'em," said Boom impatiently; "just go and get
yourselves talked about, that's all--have everybody making game of both
of you, talking about a good-looking young girl being sweet-hearted by
an old chap with one foot in the grave and a face like a dried herring.
That's what I want."

Mr. Raggett, who was just about to drink, put his mug down again and
regarded his friend fixedly.

"Might, I ask who you're alloodin' to?" he inquired somewhat shortly.

Mr. Boom, brought up in mid-career, shuffled a little and laughed
uneasily. "Them ain't my words, old chap," he said; "it was the way she
was speaking of you th