The Argosy — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Secret of the Sea. 93 of his life to maintain in the eyes of his patron. On his way home, one evening, Pod had been overtaken by a temptation which he found it impossible to resist. The temptation on this occasion took the Saape of marbles. Pod had fallen in with three or four of his old schoolmates engaged in a game of knuckle-down, and fired by the recollection of his prowess in olden days, had for once flung gentility to the winds. Carefully depositing in a corner his chimney-pot hat, for the next ten minutes he was a boy again. This time, also, it was Mr. Hammond’s voice which recalled him to a consideration of how far he had forgotten himself. ‘* Well done, Piper,” he said, as he came suddenly round the corner. ‘‘ With practice and perseverance you will make a tolerable player. By-the-by, I promised to buy you something on your birthday. What shall it be? A hoop, oy a kite, or a pretty coloured ball that you and the baby can amuse yourselves with in wet weather?” This had been very galling to Pod, especially when said hefore his schoolmates ; and. now, to-day, he had given Mr. Hammond an opportunity of sneering at him for the second time. This Mr. Hammond was Matthew Kelvin’s one articled pupil. Attracted by Pod’s shrewdness and keen common sense, he had ‘‘taken him in hand,” as he himself phrased it; although whether such taking in hand would ultimately prove beneficial to Pod, seemed some- what doubtful at present. Mr. Hammond found Pod useful as a go- between in his love-affairs. He was engaged to a young lady against the wishes of her friends. Any letters sent by him through the post were intercepted, and it was only by trusting to Pod’s skill and diplo- macy as a messenger that he could contrive to communicate with her at all. In sucha case as this, Pod might be trusted implicitly, and Hammond knew it. He was rewarded chiefly with cigars, and now and then with an odd half-crown, or a pair of soiled lavender kid gloves; which latter articles, when cleaned, looked almost as good as new, and although somewhat large, created quite a sensation among Pod’s friends and acquaintances, when worn by him on his evening stroll along the Ladies’ Walk. Then Mr. Hammond had made Pod a present of an old silver-mounted meerschaum, which, although he found it somewhat full-flavoured at present, he would doubtless be able to smoke with comfort when he should have practised on it for five or six months longer. But far beyond any pecuniary reward was to be counted the happi- ness of being in Mr. Hammond’s confidence, and the inestimable boon of his society. Since Mr. Hammond had taken him by the hand, Pod felt himself to be quite a different sort of person: he had, as it were, emerged from the grub into the butterfly. The world and he were on altogether different terms from what they had.been on twelve months ago. A year ago, for instance, he would not have thought of wearing a chimney-pot hat, or of wearing stand-up paper collars of the same ECOMRRIC OOO Ss (GO) uf