out of the
pigtail-poisoned air, her delicate sense of smell perceived something
lost to the others.

"What is it, acushla?"

"I smell something."

"What d'ye say you smell?"

"Something nice."

"What's it like?" asked Dick, sniffing hard. "_I_ don't smell anything."

Emmeline sniffed again to make sure.

"Flowers," said she.

The breeze, which had shifted several points since midday, was bearing
with it a faint, faint odour: a perfume of vanilla and spice so faint
as to be imperceptible to all but the most acute olfactory sense.

"Flowers!" said the old sailor, tapping the ashes cut of his pipe
against the heel of his boot. "And where'd you get flowers in middle of
the say? It's dhramin' you are. Come now--to bed wid yiz!"

"Fill it again," wailed Dick, referring to the pipe.

"It's a spankin' I'll give you," replied his guardian, lifting him down
from the timber baulks, and then assisting Emmeline, "in two ticks if
you don't behave. Come along, Em'line."

He started aft, a small hand in each of his, Dick bellowing.

As they passed the ship's bell, Dick stretched towards the belaying pin
that was still lying on the deck, seized it, and hit the bell a mighty
bang. It was the last pleasure to be snatched before sleep, and he
snatched it.

Paddy had made up beds for himself and his charges in the deck-house;
he had cleared the stuff off the table, broken open the windows to get
the musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain and
mate's cabins on the floor.

When the children were in bed and asleep, he went to the starboard
rail, and, leaning on it, looked over the moonlit sea. He was thinking
of ships as his wandering eye roved over the sea spaces, little
dreaming of the message that the perfumed breeze was bearing him. The
message that had been received and dimly understood by Emmeline. Then
he leaned with his back to the rail and his hands in his pockets. He
was not thinking now, he was ruminating.

The basis of the Irish character as exemplified by Paddy Button is a
profound laziness mixed with a profound melancholy. Yet Paddy, in his
left-handed way, was as hard a worker as any man on board ship; and as
for melancholy, he was the life and soul of the fo'cs'le. Yet there
they were, the laziness and the melancholy, only waiting to be tapped.

As he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, longshore
fashion, counting the dowels in the planking of the deck by the
moonlight,