The Young Castellan - George Manville Fenn - Bog

"See these here spots o' red rust, Master Roy?" "I should be blind as poor old Jenkin if I couldn't, Ben." "Ay, that you would, sir. Poor old Jenk, close upon ninety he be; and that's another thing." "What do you mean?" said the boy addressed. "What do I mean, sir? Why, I mean as that's another thing as shows as old England's wore out, and rustin' and moulderin' away." "Is this Dutch or English, Ben?" said the manly-looking boy, who had just arrived at the age when dark lads get teased about not having properly washed the sides of their faces and their upper lips, which begin to show traces of something "coming up." "I don't understand." "English, sir," said the weather-beaten speaker, a decidedly ugly man of about sixty, grizzly of hair and beard, deeply-lined of countenance, and with a peculiar cicatrice extending from the upper part of his left cheek-bone diagonally down to the right corner of his lips, and making in its passage a deep notch across his nose. "English, sir; good old honest English."