First of all, you must know, that up to the year 'three Abe Cummins and Bill Bosistow hadn't known what it is to quarrel or miss meeting each other every day. They went to school together, and then to the fishing, and afterwards they sailed together with the free-traders over to Mount's Bay, and good seamen the both, though not a bit alike in looks and ways. Abe, the elder by a year, was a bit slow and heavy on his pins; given to reading, too, though he seemed to take it up for peace and quietness more than for any show he made of his learning. Bill was smarter altogether and better looking; a bit boastful, after the manner of young chaps. He could read too, but never did much at it, though I've heard that on Saturday nights he was fond of ranting verses--stuff about drink and such like--out of a book of Robert Burns's poetry he'd borrowed off Abe. You'd hardly have thought two young fellows so different in every way could have hit it off as they did. But these were like two figures in a puzzle-block; their very differences seemed to make them fit. There never was such a pair since David and Jonathan, and I believe 'twas partly this that kept them from running after girls. So far as I can see, the most of the lads begin at seventeen; but these two held off sweethearting right along until Christmas of the year 'three when they came home from Porthleven to spend a fortnight at Ardevora, and they both fell in love with Selina Johns. Selina Johns wasn't but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair only put up a week before, she having begged her mother's leave to twist it in plaits for the Christmas courants. And Abe and Billy each knew the other's secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may say, kept his heart like a window and looked into his friend's window first. And what they did was to have it out like good fellows, and agree to wait a couple of years, unless any third party should interfere. In two years' time, they agreed, Selina Johns would be wise enough to choose-- and then let the best man win! No bad blood afterwards, and meanwhile no more talk than necessary--they shook hands upon that. That January, being tired of the free-trade, they shipped together on board a coaster for the Thames, and re-shipped for the voyage homeward on board the brig _Hand and Glove_, of London.