At last, however, he secured two prizes, than which nothing more desirable could be imagined, and with a sigh of satisfaction toddled for the last time across the lane and sat down to enjoy them at his leisure. The broken jam-pot was immediately filled with sand, while the rusty knife, grasped by its fragmentary handle, could be used in a variety of ways--so Billy discovered--as a spade, as a saw, as a chopper. He was engaged in mincing a dock leaf very small on a flat stone, his mouth opening and shutting in accompaniment to his labours, when he was suddenly hailed by somebody who had abruptly turned the corner of the lane, somebody who was probably on his way from the town. “Hello!” cried this somebody. “Hello!” responded Billy, pausing with his knife poised in mid-air and looking up with a pair of very big and very blue eyes. He had to tilt his head quite a long way back to do so, for the newcomer was tall. Billy was a little startled; to begin with the newcomer was a man, and he was not sure that he liked men--they cracked whips sometimes, and spoke loud and gruff, particularly when, as occasionally happened, Billy chanced to run across the road immediately in front of their horses; then he had funny brown clothes--nobody that Billy had ever seen wore clothes like that; and he had a brown face too, a face so very, very brown that it gave his blue eyes a strange look. Billy was secretly a good deal frightened, but being a soldier’s son he only clutched his knife the harder and said, “Hello!” again, as the stranger continued to look at him without speaking. “I rather think I ought to know you, my lad,” said the man at last, in a queer quavering voice. “I’d swear by that little cocked nose. What’s your name, eh?” “Billy,” responded the child promptly. “Right you are!” cried the man, and he caught him up in his arms, knife and jam-pot and all. “Let’s hear the rest of it, though. Billy what?” “I want to get down,” asserted the urchin, vigorously struggling. “I want to get down and make a pudden for my dada.” The man grimaced, and instantly set the child upon his legs. “Perhaps we’ve made a mistake after all,” he said; “perhaps you are some other chap’s Billy. Where does your dada live, young ’un?--tell us that.” Billy had by this time squatted on the ground again, and was once more chopping at his dock leaf. He did not answer until the man had twice repeated his question, then he explained. “My dada’s tummin’ home. He’s tummin’ in a ship--and a puff-puff,” he added, as an after-thought. “Right you are,” cried the brown-faced man again, and he caught him up in his arms once more and kissed him. “I thought I’d know my little woman’s nose among a thousand, and yours is so like it as one pea is like another. Come, let’s go and look for mammy.”