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"He do give me a lot of worry; and it don't make things easier Damper's threatenin' to knock his 'ead off if ever he catches the man darkenin' our door. Never been to school, aven't you? I 'd like to tell 'im, and that, if there's a law, it ought to be the same for all. But all my children are 'ealthy, and that's one consolation." "'Ealth's the first thing in life," agreed Tilda.
He produced a handful from his pocket. "I brought these things along because you said you were hungry." Still incredulous, distrusting her eyes, Tilda watched him dip out a small spoonful of marmalade and spread it on the biscuit. She took it and ate, closing her eyes. The taste was heavenly. "Oh, Arthur Miles, where are we?" "Why, on the Island. Didn't I tell you it was going to be all right?"
The old man clutched at the coaming that ran around the hatchway, steadied himself, and gazed around upon the fog. "'Eavenly Father!" he said aloud and reproachfully, "this won't do!" And with that he came tripping forward to the bridge with a walk like a bird's. At the sight of Tilda and Arthur Miles, who in their plight had made no effort to hide, he drew himself up suddenly.
Arthur Miles lay and drank in the mere beauty of it. How should he not? Back at the Orphanage, life such as it was and the day's routine had always taken care of themselves; he had accepted, suffered them, since to change them at all lay out of his power. But Tilda, after a minute, sat upright in her bed, with knees drawn up beneath the bedclothes and hands clasped over them.
Before the boy could ask her meaning they heard the rumble of wheels outside; and Tilda, catching him by the arm, hurried him back to the doors just as a two-horse wagon rolled down to the wharf, in charge of an elderly driver a sour-visaged man in a smock-frock, with a weather-stained top hat on the back of his head, and in his hand a whip adorned with rings of polished brass.
"Sam, fetch a lantern . . . So you 're the young lady I saw just now inside o' the van, and unless I'm mistaken, a nice job you're responsible for." Tilda nodded. 'Dolph's indiscretion had put her in a desperate fix; but something told her that her best chance with this man was to stand up to him and show fight. "Is he drowned?" she asked. "Drowned? Not a bit of it.
Arthur Miles turned his back upon Tilda, and would not budge from his boat; while Tilda seated herself huffily upon a half-decayed log by the cottage doorway, with 'Dolph beside her, and perused The Lady's Vade-Mecum.
He stands without: he waves a hand. Shall I go ask his errand? "Is that all? . . . And Mortimer reckons I'll take from 'ere to Stratford learnin' that little lot! Why, I can do it in arf-a-minute, an' on my 'ead. You just listen. Madam, a 'orseman No, wait a moment. Madam, a Norseman " Tilda hesitated and came to a halt. "Would you mind sayin' it over again, Arthur Miles?" she asked politely.
To Tilda this was all mere gibberish, but to the youth and to his hearers all real and deadly earnest. His words came painfully, from a dry throat; the effort twisted him in bodily contortions pitiful to see; the sweat stood on his handsome young forehead the brow of a tortured Apollo.
"It will be in the Gazetteer, of course," said the old chemist with a happy thought; "and you'll find that in the Free Library." "Gazetteer" "Free Library." To Tilda these were strange words names of wide oceans, perhaps, or of far foreign countries. But the boy caught at the last word: he remembered Prospero's "Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough,"
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