“It’s just like this, Benny,” he began in a paternal tone: “It kind of seems as if you and Mr. Fluff C. Foster was thrown on your beam ends, so to speak, with the wind and tide both against you. Now the government hires us to assist crafts in distress, and, of course, you comin’ under that head, we’re bound to do all we can, else there’d be danger of losin’ our job. See?” A look of perplexity still remained upon the lad’s face, and Joe Cushing proceeded to perform his part in making plain the situation of affairs. “It’s like this, Benny: Tom and Sam mean all they say, but don’t just give it to you in a way that can be understood. Now a good, willing boy what will tend out right sharp on such odd jobs as are layin’ round the station, can earn his way here; an’ when the Superintendent of the Life-Saving Service hears how we, as a crew, have put this thing, it don’t stand to reason he’s going to make any kick. ’Cause why? ’Cause there ain’t anything in the revised regulations of the service as says a word against it. So while we’ve got to wait a spell for the proper authority, according to my way of thinking, an’ the rest of us are pretty much the same mind, it’s as good as fixed already.” As if thinking it was necessary to make some reply, Benny nodded his head, but still continued to gaze inquiringly from one to the other, for as yet he failed to understand the alleged explanations, and Dick Sawyer took it upon himself to throw additional light on the subject. “It don’t appear to me as if everything was just plain to you, lad, an’ yet Joe straightened up what Tom an’ Sam didn’t get at. We settled the whole thing last night after you’d gone to bed, an’ the way I look at it is, that it’ll be as much of a favor to us as to you an’ the dog, so there’s no need to feel as if you wasn’t paying your way.” “Where is it Fluff and I are going to work?” Benny asked, after waiting an instant to learn if any other member of the crew had an explanation to make, and Tom Downey replied in a tone of authority: “Why, right here, of course, lad. Ain’t that what we’ve been telling you about? We’re counting on keeping you in the station, if it so be authority is given from headquarters, and it don’t seem as if there could be any objection. You can knock about pretty much as you please, though we count that you’ll help the cook, and keep the lamps and lanterns trimmed.” “Fluff and I are to live right here?” Benny cried excitedly, in his excitement allowing the dog to drop to the floor, where the latter set up a shrill barking as if in approval of the plan. “It looks as if you’d be glad to stay,” Sam Hardy said in a tone of satisfaction.