The townsfolk respected him
so highly, I've heard my mother say, that they made him Ex-Mayor the
year following.

Now you'll be wanting to know what made these two men hate each other,
for friends they had been, as two men ought to be who had been taken
prisoners together and spent ten years in captivity to the French, and
come home aboard the same ship like brothers. The bigger the love the
bigger the hate, and no difficulty to guess there was a woman in the
case. So there was; but the way she came between them was curious, for
all that.

First of all, you must know, that up to the year 'three Abe Cummins and
Bill Bosistow hadn't known what it is to quarrel or miss meeting each
other every day. They went to school together, and then to the fishing,
and afterwards they sailed together with the free-traders over to
Mount's Bay, and good seamen the both, though not a bit alike in looks
and ways. Abe, the elder by a year, was a bit slow and heavy on his
pins; given to reading, too, though he seemed to take it up for peace
and quietness more than for any show he made of his learning. Bill was
smarter altogether and better looking; a bit boastful, after the manner
of young chaps. He could read too, but never did much at it, though
I've heard that on Saturday nights he was fond of ranting verses--stuff
about drink and such like--out of a book of Robert Burns's poetry he'd
borrowed off Abe.

You'd hardly have thought two young fellows so different in every way
could have hit it off as they did. But these were like two figures in a
puzzle-block; their very differences seemed to make them fit.
There never was such a pair since David and Jonathan, and I believe
'twas partly this that kept them from running after girls. So far as I
can see, the most of the lads begin at seventeen; but these two held off
sweethearting right along until Christmas of the year 'three when they
came home from Porthleven to spend a fortnight at Ardevora, and they
both fell in love with Selina Johns.

Selina Johns wasn't but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair
only put up a week before, she having begged her mother's leave to twist
it in plaits for the Christmas courants. And Abe and Billy each knew
the other's secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may
say, kept his heart like a window and looked into his friend's window
first.

And what they did was to have it out like good fellows, and agree to
wait a couple