'I was always likeable with children.' His smile crinkled up through the hair round his eyes. 'Simple Simon they used to call me through our yard gates.'
'Ah, no. He was gentle-born. Laugh he did--he was always laughing--but not so as to hurt a feather. An' I loved 'en. I loved 'en before England knew 'en, or Queen Bess she broke his heart.'
'But he hadn't really done anything when you knew him, had he?' Una insisted. 'Armadas and those things, I mean.'
Simon pointed to the scars and scrapes left by Cattiwow's great log. 'You tell me that that good ship's timber never done nothing against winds and weathers since her upspringing, and I'll confess ye that young Frankie never done nothing neither. Nothing? He adventured and suffered and made shift on they Dutch sands _as_ much in any one month as ever he had occasion for to do in a half-year on the high seas afterwards. An' what was his tools? A coaster boat--a liddle box o' walty plankin' an' some few fathom feeble rope held together an' made able by _him_ sole. He drawed our spirits up in our bodies same as a chimney-towel draws a fire. 'Twas in him, and it comed out all times and shapes.'
'I wonder did he ever 'magine what he was going to be? Tell himself stories about it?' said Dan with a flush.
'I expect so. We mostly do--even when we're grown. But bein' Frankie, he took good care to find out beforehand what his fortune might be. Had I rightly ought to tell 'em this piece?' Simon turned to Puck, who nodded.
'My mother, she was just a fair woman, but my Aunt, her sister, she had gifts by inheritance laid up in her,' Simon began.
'Oh, that'll never do,' cried Puck, for the children stared blankly. 'Do you remember what Robin promised to the Widow Whitgift so long as her blood and get lasted?'[5]
[5] See 'Dymchurch Flit' in _Puck of Pook's Hill_.
'Yes. There was always to be one of them that could see farther through a millstone than most,' Dan answered promptly.
'Well, Simon's Aunt's mother,' said Puck slowly, 'married the Widow's blind son on the Marsh, and Simon's Aunt was the one chosen to see farthest through millstones. Do you understand?'
'That was what I was gettin' at,' said Simon, 'but you're so desperate quick. My Aunt she knew what was coming to people. My Uncle being a burgess of Rye, he counted all such things odious, and my Aunt she couldn't be got to practise her gifts hardly at all, because it hurted her head for a week afterwards; but when Frankie heard she had 'em, he was all for nothing till she foretold on him--till she looked in his hand to tell his fortune, d'ye see? One time we was at Rye she come aboard with my other shirt and some apples, and he fair beazled the life out of her about it.