"What in the world," she asked, "is you thinkin' so dolefully of?"
"I been thinkin'," I answered, sighing, "o' the folk down narth."
"Of the man at Runner's Woe?" the doctor asked.
"No, zur. He on'y done murder. 'Twas not o' he. 'Twas o' something
sadder than that."
"Then 'tis too sad to tell," he said.
"No," I insisted. "'Twould do well-fed folk good t' hear it."
"What was it?" my sister asked.
"I was thinkin'----"
Ah, but '_twas_ too sad!
"O' what?"
"O' the child at Comfort Harbour, Bessie, that starved in his mother's
arms."
Timmie Lovejoy threw more billets on the fire. They flamed and
spluttered and filled the room with cheerful light.
"Davy," said the doctor, "we can never cure the wretchedness of this
coast."
"No, zur?"
"But we can try to mitigate it."
"We'll try," said I. "You an' me."
"You and I."
"And I," my sister said.
Lying between the sturdy little twins, that night--where by right of
caste I lay, for it was the warmest place in the bed--I abandoned, once
and for all, my old hope of sailing a schooner, with the decks awash.
"Timmie!" I whispered.
He was sound asleep. I gave him an impatient nudge in the ribs.
"Ay, Davy?" he asked.
"You may have my hundred-tonner," said I.
"What hundred-tonner?"
"The big fore-an'-after, Timmie, I'm t' have when I'm growed. You may
skipper she. You'll not wreck her, Timmie, will you?"
He was asleep.
"Hut!" I thought, angrily. "I'll have Jacky skipper that craft, if
Timmie don't look out."
At any rate, she was not to be for me.