Mus' Springett.'

'I never held much with dressin' up, but - you're right! The
worst mistakes I ever made they was made of a Monday
morning,' Mr Springett answered. 'We've all been one sort of
fool or t'other. Mus' Dan, Mus' Dan, take the smallest gouge, or
you'll be spluttin' her stem works clean out. Can't ye see the grain
of the wood don't favour a chisel?'

'I'll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called
Brygandyne - Bob Brygandyne - Clerk of the King's Ships, a
little, smooth, bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work
done for nothin' - a won'erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made
much o' me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of
carved and gilt scroll-work for the bows of one of the King's
Ships - the SOVEREIGN was her name.'

'Was she a man-of-war?'asked Dan.

'She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile
desired the King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own.
I did not know at the time, but she'd been at Bob to get this
scroll-work done and fitted that the King might see it. I made him
the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper - one great
heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reining in webby-
footed sea-horses, and Arion with his harp high atop of them. It
was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep - painted
and gilt.'

It must ha' justabout looked fine,' said Mr Springett.