The Blue Pavilions Author:Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE TWO PAVILIONS. Captain Barker and Captain Runacles had been friends from boyhood. They had been swished together at Doctor Hnskisson's sch... more »ool, hard by the Watergate ; had been packed off to sea in the same ship, and afterward had more than once smelt powder together. Admiral Blake and Sir Christopher Mings had turned them into tough fighters by sea; and Margaret Tallworthy had completed their education ashore, and made them good friends, by rejecting both. In an access of misogyny they had planned and built their blue pavilions, beside the London road, vowing to shut themselves up and look on no woman again. This happened but a short while before the first Dutch War, in which the one served under Captain Jonings in the Ruby, and the other had the honor to be cast ashore with Prince Rupert himself, aboard the Galloper. Upon the declaration of peace, in the autumn of 1667,they had returned, and, forgetting their vow, laid siege again to their mistress, who regretted the necessity of refusing them thrice apiece. Upon his third rejection, Jeremy Runacles was driven by indignation to offer his hand at once to Mistress Isabel Seaman, sister of that same Robert Seaman who, as Mayor of Harwich, admitted Sir Anthony Deane to the freedom of the Corporation, and had the honor to receive, in exchange, twelve fire-buckets for the new town-hall. As Mistress Isabel inherited a third of the profits amassed by her father in the rope-making trade, she was considered a good match. Captain Barker, however, resented the marriage on the ground that she was out of place in a pavilion expressly designed for a confirmed bachelor. When, after a few months, her husband also began to hold this view, Mrs. Runacles, instead of reminding him that he, and he alone, was to blame for her ...« less