“What’s that?” Mark asked.

“My gosh, don’t you know what the pledge is?  Why, that’s when you put a blue ribbon in your buttonhole and swear you won’t drink nothing all your days.”

“But you’d die,” Mark objected.  “People must drink.”

“Water, yes, but there’s no call for any one to drink anything only water.  My father says he reckons more folk have gone to hell from drink than anything.  You ought to hear him preach about drink.  Why, when it gets known in the village that Sam Dale’s going to preach on drink there isn’t a seat down Chapel.  Well, I tell ’ee he frightened me last time I sat under him.  That’s why old man Timbury has it in for me whenever he gets the chance.”

Mark looked puzzled.

“Old man Timbury keeps the Hanover Inn.  And he reckons my pa’s preaching spoils his trade for a week.  That’s why he’s sexton to the church.  ’Tis the only way he can get even with the chapel folk.  He used to be in the Navy, and he lost his leg and got that hole in his head in a war with the Rooshians.  You’ll hear him talking big about the Rooshians sometimes.  My father says anybody listening to old Steve Timbury would think he’d fought with the Devil, instead of a lot of poor leary Rooshians.”

Mark was so much impressed by the older boy’s confident chatter that when he arrived back at the Vicarage and found his mother at breakfast he tried the effect of an imitation of it upon her.

“Darling boy, you mustn’t excite yourself too much,” she warned him.  “Do try to eat a little more and talk a little less.”

“But I can go out again with Cass Dale, can’t I, mother, as soon as I’ve finished my breakfast?  He said he’d wait for me and he’s going to show me where we might find some silver dollars.  He says they’re five times as big as a shilling and he’s going to show me where there’s a fox’s hole on the cliffs and he’s . . .”

“But, Mark dear, don’t forget,” interrupted his mother who was feeling faintly jealous of this absorbing new friend, “don’t forget that I can show you lots of the interesting things to see round here.  I was a little girl here myself and used to play with Cass Dale’s father when he was a little boy no bigger than Cass.”

Just then grandfather came into the room and Mark was instantly dumb; he had never been encouraged to talk much at breakfast in Lima Street.  He did, however, eye his grandfather from over the top of his cup, and he found him less alarming in the morning than he had supposed him to be last night.  Parson Trehawke kept reaching across the table for the various things he wanted until his daughter jumped up and putting her arms round his neck said: 

“Dearest father, why don’t you ask Mark or me to pass you what you want?”

“So long alone.  So long alone,” murmured Parson Trehawke with an embarrassed smile and Mark observed with a thrill that when he smiled he looked exactly like his mother, and had Mark but known it exactly like himself.