Stronger now. Increasingly stronger as day succeeded day and the year came more strongly into her own. Only waiting a little more strength, so he believed, to betake himself from Pendra Workhouse and go--anywhere. Actually, as the event that did at last prompt him to go might have told him, it was a reason, a shaking-up, a stirring of his normal round, rather than sufficient strength that he awaited. In a numbed and listless and detached way he was not uncomfortable in the new circumstances to which he was introduced after the Board-room interview. The Master, removed from the obsequious habit that he wore when before the Guardians, showed himself not unkindly. He conceived rather a liking for Mr. Wriford. Mr. Wriford performed for him the duties of boy-"clurk" in a manner that was of the greatest assistance to him. He reported very favourably on the matter to the Guardians; and when Mr. Wriford spoke of taking his discharge put forward a proposition to which the Guardians found it convenient to consent. Why lose this inmate of such valuable clurkly accomplishments? Why not offer him his railway fare home, wherever in reason that might be, if he stayed, say a month, and continued to assist the Master? At the end of that time he might be offered a very few shillings a week to continue further--if wanted. Mr. Master carried the proposition to Mr. Wriford. Mr. Wriford in a numbed, listless and detached way said: "All right, yes." He was taken from the workhouse ward where till then he had slept and accommodated in a tiny box-room in the Master's quarters. His nose was kept at it, as Mr. Master had been desired. His duties were capable of extension in many directions. That he fulfilled them in a numbed, listless, and detached fashion was none to the worse in that he accepted them without complaint whatever they might be. "I call him: 'All right, yes,'" Mr. Master obsequiously told the Guardians. "That's about all ever he says. But he does it a heap. Look at the way the stores are entered up. I've had him checking them all this week." CHAPTER V MAINTOP HAIL FOR THE CAPTAIN I The event that at last aroused Mr. Wriford and took him far from Pendra was supplied by the oldest sea-captain living on that distinguished personage's birthday. The oldest sea-captain living "went a bit in his legs" shortly after Mr. Wriford had entered upon the new phase of his duties. He was provided with a wheeled-chair, and Mr. Wriford found him seated in this in the grounds one day, abandoned by his cronies and weeping softly over his beloved portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. He wept, he told Mr. Wriford, because none of them blokes ever took any notice of him now. The finer weather kept the blokes largely out of doors, and they would go off and leave him. "I'm the oldest sea-captain living, Matey," said he in a culminating wail, "and I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. It's cruel on me. 'Ave a look at it, Matey."