Page:Wren--The young stagers.djvu/111



! There was beloved Bobball, sitting pensive on the sand and gazing upon the mighty ocean, his short clay pipe protruding from the red burning bush of his huge moustache. The children ran towards him.

"Gorblessmysoul!" he ejaculated, as his saturnine face lit up with real pleasure, "I was ajust thinkin' abaht you two." This was untrue. Bobball had been considering the chaplain's phrase, "a waste of waters," as he regarded the separating sea, and thinking of how much he personally would do to remedy the waste, were it only beer.

"That's a nice lill' whip, Missy," he remarked, taking the rhinoceros-hide switch that Boodle had surreptitiously borrowed (in Daddy's absence) the better to correct Jock's besetting sin of lazi- 93