I must own, though, that he was anything but an amiable fellow, and I used to wonder whether it was because his father, the doctor, gave him too much physic; but it couldn't have been that, for Bob always used to say that if he was ill his father would send him out without any breakfast to swallow the sea air upon the cliffs, and that always made him well.
Bigley Uggleston, my other companion, on the contrary, was about the best-tempered fellow that ever lived.

He was the son of old Jonas Uggleston, who lived at the big cottage down in the Gap, on one side of the little stream.

Jonas was supposed to be a fisherman, and he certainly used to fish, but he carried on other business as well with his lugger--business which enabled him to send his son to the grammar-school, where he was one of the best-dressed of the boys, and had about as much pocket-money as Bob and I put together, but we always spent it for him and he never seemed to mind.
I have said that he was an amiable fellow, and he had this peculiarity, that if you looked at him you always began to laugh, and then his broad face broke up into a smile, as if he was pleased because you laughed at him, and tease, worry, or do what you liked, he never seemed to mind.
I never saw another boy like him, and I used to wonder why Bob Chowne and I should be a couple of ordinary robust boys of fourteen, while he was five feet ten, broad-shouldered, with a good deal of dark downy whisker and moustache, and looked quite a man.
Sometimes Bob and I used to discuss the matter in private, and came to the conclusion that as Bigley was six months older than we were, we should be like him in stature when another six months had passed; but we very soon had to give up that idea, and so it remained that our school-fellow had the aspect of a grown man, but what Bob called his works were just upon a level with our own, for, except in appearance, he was not manly in the slightest degree..