The time is next morning, and the first grey hour of daylight.  The scene, an unlovely tidal basin crowded with small shipping—­ schooners and brigantines dingy with coal-dust, tramp steamers, tugs, Severn trows; a ship lock and beyond it the river, now grown into a broad flood all grey and milky in the dawn.

Tilda and Arthur Miles sat on the edge of the basin, with Godolphus between them, and stared down on the deck of the Severn Belle tug, waiting for some sign of life to declare itself on board.  By leave of a kindly cranesman, they had spent the night in a galvanised iron shed where he stored his cinders, and the warmth in the cinders had kept them comfortable.  But the dawn was chilly, and now they had only their excitement to keep them warm.  For some reason best known to himself the dog did not share in this excitement, and only the firm embrace of Tilda’s arm around his chest and shoulders held him from wandering.  Now and again he protested against this restraint.

Tilda’s eyes never left the tug; but the boy kept intermittent watch only, being busy writing with the stump of a pencil on a scrap of paper he had spread on the gritty concrete.  Somewhere in the distance a hooter sounded, proclaiming the hour.  Still but the thinnest thread of smoke issued from the tug’s funnel.

“It’s not like Bill,” Tilda muttered. “’E was always partic’lar about early risin’ . . .  An’ I don’t know what you feel like, Arthur Miles, but I could do with breakfast.”

“And a wash,” suggested the boy.

“It don’t look appetisin’—­not even if we knew ’ow to swim,” said Tilda, relaxing her watch for an instant only, and studying the water in the basin.  “We must ‘old on—­’old on an’ wait till the clouds roll by—­that was one of Bill’s sayin’s.  An’ to think of ‘im bein’ so near!” Tilda never laughed, but some mirth in her voice anticipated Bill’s astonishment.  “Now read me what yer’ve written.”

“It’s no more than what you told me.”

“Never mind; let’s ’ear if it’s c’rect.”

Arthur Miles read—­

’DEAR MR. HUCKS,—­This comes to say that we are not at Holmness yet, but getting on.  This place is called Sharpness, and does a big trade, and the size of the shipping would make you wonder, after Bursfield.  We left S.B. and the M.’s at Stratford, as per my favour—­’

“What does that mean?” asked the scribe, looking up.

“It’s what they always put into business letters.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It means—­well, it means you’re just as sharp as th’ other man, so ’e needn’t try it on.”

’—­as per my favour of yesterday.  And just below Stratford we picked up with a painter from America, but quite the gentleman, as you will see by his taking us on to a place called Tukesberry in a real moter car.’

[Let it be pleaded for Arthur Miles that his spelling had been outstripped of late by his experience.  His sentences were as Tilda had constructed them in dictation.]