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Pretty carpenter's work Hosking was likely to teach him! Now, after the way of women, the deed was no sooner done than Mrs. Geen began to repent it. She knew very well that her dear boy would run into danger; but she kept her trouble to herself until there arrived at Ardevora a new Methodist preacher called Meakin.
There was no resisting a sociable offer like this, and in two two's, as you might say, Billy was boasting ahead for all he was worth, and the company with their mouths open all but the landlady, who was opening her eyes instead, and wider and wider. "There isn' none present that remembers me, I dare say. My name's Bosistow Billy Bosistow from Ardevora parish.
No? Well, I see you going about Ardevora, and making a study of us; and I know you can read, because I've seen you doing it down to the Institute. But sometimes, when I ask you a simple little question like that, you force me to wonder what you've been doing with yourself all these years. Why, it got into the Law Courts!
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.
So he offered them five hundredweight of lead to ballast and trim her; more, if it should be needed; and suggested their laying down moorings for her, well on the outer side of the harbour, where from his garden the old man would have a good sight of her. He would, if the committee approved, provide the moorings gratis. On the day of the launch Ardevora dressed itself in all its bunting.
He'd neglected two parishes to come and preach the sermon: for Ardevora, you must know, was one of three livings he held besides a canonry, and he kept Grandison to serve the three, that being all he could afford after paying for his carriage-and-pair and postillions to carry him back and forth between us and Penzance, where he lodged for the sake of his asthma and the little card-parties for which Penzance was famous in those days.
Then came the drinking fit, and he'd wake out of that like a man dazed, sitting in a corner and brooding for days together. What he brooded on, of course, was means of escape. At first, like every other prisoner in Jivvy, he had kept himself cheerful with hopes of exchange, but it seemed the folks home in Ardevora had given up trying for a release, or else letters never reached them.
But you needn' to fret yourself: I ben't the man to take an advantage of an old friend, fair though it be. Man, I ha'n't been to Ardevora I turned back. So finish your beer and come'st along with me, and we'll walk down to Selina Johns together and ask her which of us she'll choose, fair and square." Abe set down his mug and looked up, studying the signboard over the door.
Wearne, the collector, understood this, and it was not by his fault either that the firing came about, but all through an interfering woman and a preacher who couldn't mind his own business. It began in this way. Bessie Bussow had a sister-in-law married and living over here in Ardevora Ann Geen was the name of her a daughter of Kitty Lemal. No?
Not much welcome for me in Ardevora, I b'law, though I do love every stone of her streets. But there's one there that didn' forget me in my captivity, and won't despise me in these here rags. I wish I'd seen Abe's face when I jumped aboard the boat. Poor old Abe! but all's fair in love and war, I reckon. He can't be here till to-morrow at earliest, so let's have a pipe o' baccy on it."
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