Their apprehensions were vain. The whole town had entered into the fun of
Tregenza's boat, and she was no sooner felt to be within measureable
distance of completion than committees--composed at first of the younger
fishermen (but, by and by, the elders joined shamefacedly), held informal
meetings, and devised a royal launch for her. What though she could not,
as Mr. Penno had foreseen, be extricated from the yard but at the expense
of seven feet of wall and the butt-end of Ugnot's pigsty? Half a dozen
young masons undertook to pull the wall down and rebuild it twice as
strong as before; and the landlord of Ugnot's, being interviewed, declared
that he had been exercised in mind for thirty years over the propinquity
of the pigsty and the dwelling-house, and would readily accept thirty
shillings compensation for all damage likely to be done.
Report of these preparations at length reached Elder Penno's ears, and
surprised him considerably. He sent for the ringleaders and remonstrated
with them.
"I've no cause to be friends with Tregenza, the Lord knows," he said.
"Still, the man's ailin' and weak in his mind. Such a shock as you're
makin' ready to give 'en, as like as not may land the fellow in his
grave."
"Land 'en in his grave?" they answered. "Why the old fool knows the whole
programme! He've a-sent down to the Ship Inn to buy a bottle o' wine for
the christenin' an' looks forward to enjoyin' hisself amazin'."
The Elder went straight to Tregenza, and found this to be no more than the
truth.
"And here have I been lyin' awake thinkin' how to spare your feelin's!" he
protested.
"'Tis a very funny thing," answered Tregenza, "that you, who in the way o'
money make it your business to know every man's affairs in Ardevora,
should be the last to get wind of a little innercent merrymakin'.
That's your riches, again."
After this one must allow that it was handsome of the Elder to summon the
committee again and point out to them the uncertainty of the _Pass By_'s
floating when they got her down to the water. Had they considered this?
They had not. So he offered them five hundredweight of lead to ballast
and trim her; more, if it should be needed; and suggested their laying
down moorings for her, well on the outer side of the harbour, where from
his garden the old man would have a good sight of her. He would, if the
committee approved, provide the moorings gratis.
On the day of the launch Ardevora dressed itself in all its bunting.
A crowd of three hundred assembled in and around Tregenza's backyard and
lined the adjacent walls to witness the ceremony and hear the speeches;
but Elder Penno was neither a speech-maker nor a spectator. He could not,
for nervousness, leave the quay, where he stood ready beside a cauldron of
bubbling tar and a pile of lead pegs, to pay the ship over before she took
the water, and trim her as soon as ever she floated. But when, amid
cheers and to the strains of the Temperance Brass Band, she lay moored at
length upon a fairly even keel, with the red ensign drooping from a staff
over her stern, he climbed the hill to find Tregenza contemplating her
with pride through the gap in his ruined wall.
"I missed 'ee at the christ'nin'," said the old man. "But it went off
very well. Lev' us go into the house an' touch pipe."
"It surprises me," said the Elder, "to find you so cheerful as you be.
An occupation like this goin' out o' your life--I reckoned you might feel
it, a'most like the loss of a limb."
"A man o' my age ought to wean hisself from things earthly," said the old
man; "an' besides, I've a-got _you_."
"Hey?"
"Henceforth I've a-got you, an' all to yourself."
"Seems a funny thing," mused the Elder; "an' you at this moment owin' me
no less than seventy-five pound!"
Sam Tregenza settled himself down in his chair and nodded as he lit pipe.
"Nothin' like friendship, after all," he said. "Now you're talkin'
comfortable!"
[1] Playing truant.