sitting, if he knew his company very well, he would reward them with
his favourite and only song, "The Golden Vanitee":

A ship I have got in the North Countree,
And I had her christened the Golden Vanitee;
O, I fear she's been taken by a Spanish Gal-a-lee,
As she sailed by the Lowlands low!

In some hazy way he had persuaded himself that the Spanish galleon of
the ballad was the very ship whose timbers over-arched him and his
audience; and for the moment, being himself inverted (so to speak) by
the potency of his own singing, he blew out his chest and straddled
out his thick calves and screwed up his eyes, quite as if his
roof-tree were right-side-up once more in blue water, and he on deck
beside the weather-rail. But the mood began to pass as soon as he
bolted the front door behind his guests, and Ann the cook poured him
out his last cup of mulled ale and withdrew with the saucepan.
And another noon would find him seated under his leaning house-front,
his eyes half-closed, his attention divided between the whisper of
the tide and the murmur in the pigeon-cotes overhead, his body at
ease and his soul content. His was a happy life--or had been, but
for two crumpled rose-leaves.

To begin with, there were those confounded pot-boys. It puzzled
Master Simon almost as much as it annoyed him; he paid fair wages and
passed for a good employer; but he could not keep a pot-boy for
twelve months. As a matter of fact, I know the river to have been
the bottom of the mischief--the river, and perhaps the talk of the
ship-captains. It might satisfy Master Simon to sit and watch the
salmon passing up in autumn towards their spawning beds, and rubbing,