"It rots the wood," repeated Captain Hagberd. "It is the only unthrifty,
careless habit I know in you. Why don't you have a clothes line out in
your back yard?"

Miss Carvil would say nothing to this--she only shook her head
negatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered
little beds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time
to cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging
to an exotic clime; and Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in
No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of
rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared,
with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in
which he chose to clothe himself--"for the time being," would be his
mumbled remark to any observation on the subject--like a man roughened
out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent
billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome
face, a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist
and never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew.

Seven years before, he had seriously answered, "Next month, I think,"
to the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished
local wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently
in the tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had
entered to buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with
three half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he
carried in the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon
as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The old one and the young one
will be strolling arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The
tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker;
high old times are coming for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It