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“Turn to the lift a bit more,” he’d say, “aisy does it. Stidy so—musha! musha! where’s thim scissors? Dick, be holdin’ the end of this bit of string till I get the stitches in behint. Does that hang comfortable?—well, an’ you’re the trouble an’ all. How’s that? That’s aisier, is it? Lift your fut till I see if it comes to your knees. Now off with it, and lave me alone till I stitch the tags to it.”

It was the mixture of a skirt and the idea of a sail, for it had two rows of reef points; a most ingenious idea, as it could be reefed if the child wanted to go paddling, or in windy weather.

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One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor, to use his own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick came through the woods and across the sands running. He had been on the hill-top.

“Paddy,” he cried to the old man, who was fixing a hook on a fishing-line, “there’s a ship!”

It did not take Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of an old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped.