t is being repeated on the sea."

"Umph. Early Christians! The later Christians have made a pretty mess of
it. Now, just give me, without any waste words, all you have to say
about this hospital business. Don't bring in preachee-preachee any
more."

"Very good, dear. Stop me if I go wrong. I'm going round about. You
know, you crabby dear, you wouldn't neglect an old dog or an old pony
after it had served you. You wouldn't say, 'Oh, Ponto had his tripe and
biscuit, and Bob had his hay;' you would take care of them. Now
wouldn't you? Of course you would. And these fishers get their wages,
but still they give their lives for your convenience just as the dog and
the pony do."

"Yes, yes. But come to the hospital ship. You dance round as if you were
a light-weight boxer sparring for breath."

"Hus-s-sh! I won't have it. The fishermen, then, are constantly being
dreadfully hurt: I don't mean by such things as toothache, though many
hundreds of them have to go sleepless for days, until they are worn out
with pain;--I mean really serious, violent hurts. Why, we were not
allowed to see several of the men who came to Dr. Ferrier for treatment.
The wounds were too shocking. Nearly eight thousand of them are already
relieved in various ways every year. Just fancy. And I assure you I
wonder very much that there are no more."

"What sort of hurts?"

Then Marion told him all about the falling spars, the poisoned ulcers,
the great festers, the poisoned hands caused by venomous fishes
accidentally handled in the dark, wild midnights; the salt-water cracks,
the thousand and one physical injuries caused by falls, or the blow of
the sea, or the prolonged fighting with heavy gales. The girl had become
eloquent; she had _seen_, and, as she was eloquent as women generally
are, she was able to make the keen old man see exactly what she wanted
him to see. Then she told how Ferrier stuck to the sinking smack and
saved his patient, and Robert Cassall muttered, "That sounds like a
man's doings;" and then with every modesty she spoke of Tom Betts's
mistake. There never was such a fluent, artful, mock-modest, dramatic
puss in the world!

"Hah! mistook you for an angel. Eh? Not much mistake when you like to be
good, but when you begin picking my pocket, there's not much of the
angel about that, I venture to say."

So spoke the old gentleman; but the anecdote delighted him so much that
for two or three days he snorted "Angel!" in various key