One day Mr. Button, noticing Dick and the girl kneeling opposite each other on a flat, hard piece of sand near the water’s edge, strolled up to see what they were doing. They were playing marbles. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth watching and criticising the game, pleased that the “childer” were amused. Then he began to be amused himself, and in a few minutes more he was down on his knees taking a hand; Emmeline, a poor player and an unenthusiastic one, withdrawing in his favour.

After that it was a common thing to see them playing together, the old sailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of his horny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure he was playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nut trees with cries of “Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!” He entered into all their amusements just as one of themselves. On high and rare occasions Emmeline would open her precious box, spread its contents and give a tea-party, Mr. Button acting as guest or president as the case might be.

“Is your tay to your likin’, ma’am?” he would enquire; and Emmeline, sipping at her tiny cup, would invariably make answer: “Another lump of sugar, if you please, Mr. Button”; to which would come the stereotyped reply: “Take a dozen, and welcome; and another cup for the good of your make.”

Then Emmeline would wash the things in imaginary water, replace them in the box, and every one would lose their company manners and become quite natural again.

“Have you ever seen your name, Paddy?” asked Dick one morning.

“Seen me which?”

“Your name?”

“Arrah, don’t be axin’ me questions,” replied the other. “How the divil could I see me name?”

“Wait and I’ll show you,” replied Dick.

He ran and fetched a piece of cane, and a minute later on the salt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared these portentous letters:

“Faith, an’ it’s a cliver boy y’are,” said Mr. Button admiringly, as he leaned luxuriously against a cocoa-nut tree, and contemplated Dick’s handiwork. “And that’s me name, is it? What’s the letters in it?”

Dick enumerated them.

“I’ll teach you to do it, too,” he said. “I’ll teach you to write your name, Paddy—would you like to write your name, Paddy?”

“No,” replied the other, who only wanted to be let smoke his pipe in peace; “me name’s no use to me.”

But Dick, with the terrible gadfly tirelessness of childhood, was not to be put off, and the unfortunate Mr. Button had to go to school despite himself. In a few days he could achieve the act of drawing upon the sand characters somewhat like the above, but not without prompting, Dick and Emmeline on each side of him, breathless for fear of a mistake.

“Which next?” would ask the sweating scribe, the perspiration pouring from his forehead—“which next? an’ be quick, for it’s moithered I am.”