"The amount of disease disseminated by house-flies is, I am told,
incalculable," pursued Mr Hambly. "Yes--as I was saying, or about to
say--it's a pity that, in a small town like Polpier, two ministers of
religion cannot between them keep a general shop to suit all tastes,
like Mrs Pengelly." Mr Hambly's voice dropped as he wound up.
"Ah, if--like Mrs Pengelly--we kept bull's-eyes for the children!"

"And for another year we have to sit under a man like that!" said Mrs
Polsue to Miss Oliver on their way homeward.


Nicky-Nan had one thing in his favour. He came of an old Polpier
stock. It had decayed, to be sure, and woefully come down in the
world: but the town, though its tongue may wag, has ever a soft heart
towards its own. And the Nanjivells had been of good "haveage"
(lineage) in their time. They had counted in the family a real
Admiral, of whom Nicky-Nan had inherited a portrait in oil-colours.
It hung in the parlour-kitchen underneath his bedroom, between two
marine paintings of Vesuvius erupting by day and Vesuvius erupting by
night: and the Penhaligon children stood in terrible awe of it
because the eyes followed you all round the room, no matter what
corner you took.

In neighbourliness, then, and for the sake of his haveage,
Nicky-Nan's first welcome home had been kindly enough. His savings
were few, but they bought him a small share in a fishing-boat,
besides enabling him to rent the tenement in the Doctor's House, and
to make it habitable with a few sticks of furniture. Also he rented
a potato-patch, beyond the coastguard's hut, around the eastward