Page:The Delectable Duchy.djvu/84

 from his morning bath. In the pauses of conversation he rubbed his head with a big bath-towel. His legs and feet were bare, and he wore only a little shirt and velveteen breeches, with scarlet ribbons hanging untied at the knees.

"You're laughing!"

I stifled the smile.

"What were you laughing at?"

"Why, you're wrong, little man, on just one or two points," I answered evasively.

"Which?"

"Well, about the sunshine in England. The sun is not always shining there, by any means."

"I'm afraid you know very little about it," said the boy, shaking his head.

"Johnny! Johnny!" a voice called down the companion-ladder at this moment. It was followed by a thin, weary-looking man, dressed in carpet slippers and a suit of seedy black. I guessed his age at fifty, but suspect now that the lines about his somewhat prim mouth were traced there by sorrows rather than by years. He bowed to me shyly, and addressed the boy.

"Johnny, what are you doing here? in bare feet!"