at the small box
containing Will's bait.

Before the latter could answer there was a shout at the end of the pier.

"Ahoy! Ar--thur! Taff!" and a boy of the age and height of the first
stranger came tearing along the stones panting loudly, and pulling up
short to give Will's questioner a hearty slap on the back.

"Here, I've had a job to find you, Taff. I've been looking everywhere."

"I wish you would not be so rough, Richard," said the one addressed,
divine his shoulders a hitch, and frowning angrily as he saw that Will
was watching them intently. "There's no need to be so boisterous."

"No, my lord. Beg pardon, my lord," said the other boy with mock
humility; and then, with his eyes twinkling mirthfully, he thrust his
stiff straw hat on to the back of his head, and plumped himself down in
a sitting position on the edge of the pier, with his legs dangling down
towards the bulwark of the lugger, and his heels softly drubbing the
stone wall.

For though to a certainty twin brother of the first stranger, he was
very differently dressed, having on a suit of white boating flannels and
a loose blue handkerchief knotted about his neck.

"Why, Taff," he cried, "this chap's going fishing."

"I wish you wouldn't call me out of my name before this sort of people,"
said his brother, flushing and speaking in a low voice.

"All right, old chap, I won't, if you'll go back to the inn and take off
those old brush-me-ups. You look as if you'd come out of a glass case."

The other was about to retort angrily and walk away, but his curiosity
got the better of him, for just then the boy in the flannels exclaimed
in a brisk way:

"I say: going fishing?"

"Yes," said Will, looking up, with the smile at the corner of his lips
deepening; and as the eyes of the two lads met they seemed to approve of
each other at once.

"May I come aboard?"

"Yes, if you like," said Will; and the boy leaped down in an instant,
greatly to his brother's disgust, for he wanted to go on board as well,
but held aloof, and whisked his cane about viciously, listening to all
that was going on.

"How are you?" said the second lad, nodding in a friendly way to Josh.

"Hearty, thanky," said the latter in his sing-song way; "and how may you
be?"

"Hearty," said the boy, laughing. "I'm always all right. He isn't," he
added, with a backward nod of his head, which nearly made him lose his
straw hat; but he caught it as it fell, clapped it on the