CHAPTER III.
THE TWO PAVILIONS.
Captain Barker and Captain Runacles had been friends from boyhood.
They had been swished together at Dr.Huskisson's school, hard by the Water Gate; had been packed off to sea in the same ship, and afterwards had more than once smelt powder together.

Admiral Blake and Sir Christopher Mings had turned them into tough fighters by sea; and Margaret Tellworthy had completed their education ashore, and made them better 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 time before the first Dutch War, in which the one served under Captain Jonings in the _Ruby_ and the other had the honour 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 honour 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 intrusion, did her best to make matters easy by quitting this world altogether on St.Bartholomew's Eve, 1670, leaving behind her the smallest possible daughter.