I'd sail this hooker the wide world round!'

BOTH: We tell these tales, which are strictest true, etc.



The Wrong Thing


Dan had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled
the schoolroom with chips, which he expected Una to clear away,
they turned him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to
Mr Springett's yard, where he knew he could make as much mess
as he chose. Old Mr Springett was a builder, contractor, and
sanitary engineer, and his yard, which opened off the village
street, was always full of interesting things. At one end of it was a
long loft, reached by a ladder, where he kept his iron-bound
scaffold-planks, tins of paints, pulleys, and odds and ends he had
found in old houses. He would sit here by the hour watching his
carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard below, while Dan
gouged and grunted at the carpenter's bench near the loft
window. Mr Springett and Dan had always been particular
friends, for Mr Springett was so old he could remember when
railways were being made in the southern counties of England,
and people were allowed to drive dogs in carts.

One hot, still afternoon - the tar-paper on the roof smelt like
ships - Dan, in his shirt-sleeves, was smoothing down a new
schooner's bow, and Mr Springett was talking of barns and
houses he had built. He said he never forgot any stick or stone he