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226 altogether and better looking; a bit boastful, after the manner of young chaps. He could read too, but never did much at it, though I've heard that on Saturday nights he was fond of ranting verses—stuff about drink and such like—out of a book of Robert Burns's poetry he'd borrowed off Abe.

You'd hardly have thought two young fellows so different in every way could have hit it off as they did. But these were like two figures in a puzzle-block; their very differences seemed to make them fit. There never was such a pair since David and Jonathan, and I believe 'twas partly this that kept them from running after girls. So far as I can see, the most of the lads begin at seventeen; but these two held off sweethearting right along until Christmas of the year 'three when they came home from Porthleven to spend a fortnight at Ardevora, and they both fell in love with Selina Johns.

Selina Johns wasn't but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair only put up a week before, she having begged her mother's leave to twist it in plaits for the Christmas courants. And Abe and Billy each knew the other's secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may say, kept his heart like a window and looked into his friend's window first.

And what they did was to have it out like good fellows, and agree to wait a couple of years, unless any third party should interfere. In two years' time, they agreed, Selina Johns would be wise enough to