“The men in the ‘Dotterel’ then were talking about the boat, when suddenly I heard John Broadwood say ‘Whisht!’ Lizzie stood there in the doorway, under a model of a brig in a glass case there used to be. ‘Did some of ye call?’ she said; and the men shuffled their feet and shifted about on stools and benches.--‘We told ye not to bother, Lizzie,’ Broadwood says; ‘we’ll wait on we’rsels.’--‘It must ha’ been the babe I heard,’ says Lizzie; ‘let her bring it near th’ fire, Willie.’ But the woman said again that she’d do till Osa Couper came; and Lizzie asked Nunan if he wasn’t her husband.” * * * * * He paused; and when in a minute he resumed again, there was the same magisterial, slightly querulous note in his voice that we had heard before--the schoolmaster’s note. * * * * * “Before we go further, let’s understand one another,” he said. “When I said that Nunan had a knife, I saw some of you anticipating--making ready--saying to yourselves, Ah! knives mean stabbing; never mind your comments; come to the tale and the knife!--Well, you’re wise in your day and generation, but for all that I think you’re a little wrong too. The tale’s a good deal, but the man who tells it is also something. I could show you Willie Harverson’s house, and you’d gape round for five minutes with your caps in your hands, thinking--well, goodness knows what you’d be thinking! You’ve seen ’em, perhaps, tourists, open-mouthed, in the room where somebody was born or died. To me it would always seem stupid if it weren’t so comical. Facts are neither the most interesting nor the most important things in the world--not that sort of fact. The knife was a fact, and we’re coming to the knife; but it’s a good deal like other things in life you look forward to--nothing when you get it. One of these new writers I don’t pretend to understand says there are two tragedies in life--not getting what you want, and getting it. I know I used to think that if ever I became head of a decent grammar-school ... well, I’ve been head of a grammar-school. When I’d got that I wanted something else; and so on. And here I am, back again where I was born, with grammar-schools and suchlike all behind me. Garrulous too.... But tragedy or not, there’s little satisfaction in getting things. You see, you don’t drop dead in the perfect, glorious, fit moment when you attain ’em. Life goes on, a dull, stretched-out anti-climax; and there seems to be only one finish to it all. I’m an old man, and probably nearer it than you....