ed by a low fence of split-bamboo baskets that
had once contained sugar from Batavia; a coffee bag from the wreck of a
Dutch barque served for door-mat; a rum-cask with a history caught
rain-water from the eaves; and a lapdog's pagoda--a dainty affair,
striped in scarlet and yellow, the jetsom of some passenger ship--had
been deftly adapted by Old Zeb, and stood in line with three straw
bee-skips under the eastern wall.

The next day but one after Christmas dawned deliciously in Porthlooe,
bright with virginal sunshine, and made tender by the breath of the Gulf
Stream. Uncle Issy, passing up the road at nine o'clock, halted by the
Cherokee to pass a word with its proprietor, who presented the very
antipodes of a bird's-eye view, as he knocked about the crumbling clods
with his visgy at the top of the slope.

"Mornin', Old Zeb; how be 'ee, this dellicate day?"

"Brave, thankee, Uncle."

"An' how's Coden Rachel?"

"She's charmin', thankee."

"Comely weather, comely weather; the gulls be comin' back down the
coombe, I see."

"I be jealous about its lastin'; for 'tis over-rathe for the time o'
year. Terrible topsy-turvy the seasons begin to run, in my old age.
Here's May in Janewarry; an' 'gainst May, comes th' east wind breakin'
the ships o' Tarshish."

"Now, what an instructive chap you be to convarse with, I do declare!
Darned if I didn' stand here two minnits, gazin' up at the seat o' your
small-clothes, tryin' to think 'pon what I wanted to say; for I'd a
notion that I wanted to speak, cruel bad, but cudn' lay hand on't.
So at last I takes heart an' says 'Mornin', I says, beginnin' i' that
very common way an' hopin' 'twould come. An' round you whips wi'
'ships o' Tarshish' pon your tongue; an' henceforth 'tis all Q's an'
A's, like a cattykism."

"Well, now you say so, I _did_ notice, when I turned round, that you was
lookin' no better than a fool, so to speak. But what's the notion?"

"'Tis a question I've a-been daggin' to ax'ee ever since it woke me up
in the night to spekilate thereon. For I felt it very curious there
shud he three Zebedee Minardses i' this parish a-drawin' separate breath
at the same time."

"Iss, 'tis an out-o'-the-way fact."

"A stirrin' age, when such things befall! If you'd a-told me, a week
agone, that I should live to see the like, I'd ha' called 'ee a liar;
an' yet here I be a-talkin' away, an' there you be a-listening an' here
be the old world a-spinnin' us round as in