’Which at Tukesberry, happening to come across a gentleman friend of
     mine, as used to work for Gavel, and by name William, this American
     gentleman—­’

“Sounds odd, don’t it?” interposed Tilda.

“There’s too much about gentlemen in it,” the boy suggested.

“Well, but you’re a gentleman.  We shall find that out, right enough, when we get to ’Olmness.  ‘Ucks don’t know that, and I’m tonin’ ’im up to it. . . .  You ‘aven’t put in what I told yer—­about me tellin’ Mr. Jessup as Bill was my brother-in-law an’ ‘is callin’ back to us that ’e’d look after us ’ere.”

“No.”

“W’y not?”

There was reason for Tilda’s averted gaze.  She had to watch the tug’s deck.  But why did her face flush?

“Because it isn’t true.”

“It got us ’ere,” she retorted.  “True or not, ’twouldn’t do yer no ’arm to allow that, seemin’ to me.”

Although she said it defiantly, her tone carried no conviction.

Arthur Miles made no response, but read on—­

    ’—­this American gentleman paid our fares on by railway to join him,
     and gave us half a suffering for X.’s.’

“Is that right?”

“Sure,” said Tilda.  “Gold money is all sufferin’s or ’arf-sufferin’s.  I got it tied in a corner o’ what Miss Montagu taught me to call my shimmy—­shifts bein’ vulgar, she said.”

    ’—­So here we are, and W.B. capital.  Which we hope to post our next
     from Holmness, and remain,’
    ‘Yours respectfully,’
    ’TILDA.

    ‘William will post this.’

“But you’re not sure of that, you know,” he urged.  Hereat Tilda found the excuse she wanted for losing her temper (for her falsehood—­or, rather, the boy’s pained disapproval of it—­yet shamed her).

“’Oo brought yer ’ere, I’d like to know?  And where’d yer be at this moment if ‘twasn’t for me an’ ’Dolph?  In Glasson’s black ’ole, that’s where yer’d be!  An’ now sittin’ ’ere so ‘igh-an’-mighty, an’ lecturin’!”

The boy’s eyes had filled with tears.

“But I’m not—­I’m not!” he protested.  “Tilda!—­”

“As if,” she jerked out between two hard, dry sobs (Tilda, by the way, never wept)—­“as if I wasn’ sure, after chasin’ Bill all this way on purpose, and ’im the best of men!”

Just at this moment there emerged from the after-companion of the Severn Belle, immediately below them, a large head shaped like an enormous pear—­shaped, that is, as if designed to persuade an upward passage through difficult hatchways, so narrow was the cranium and so extremely full the jowl.  It was followed by a short bull neck and a heavy pair of shoulders in a shirt of dirty grey flannel; and having emerged so far, the apparition paused for a look around.  It was the steersman of yesterday afternoon.

“’Ullo, below there!” Tilda hailed him.

“’Ullo yerself!” The man looked up and blinked.  “W’y, if you ain’t the gel and boy?”