Old Bill - Tutor

One of earliest stories of James Lennox Kerr, in a 1931 issue of the magazine/journal Blue Peter, was called Old Bill - Tutor. In it the narrator is 18 years old and about to jump ship in Melbourne, Australia. The story recounts a conversation with an old hand, Bill who had left home to return to sea, intending to return. But he drinks away his wages and probably never will return. The story ends: "I would be almost afraid to meet him now; for I might look with the eyes of maturity and see him for what I suppose he was, a lying old cadger of "fills", muddied yet glorifies by the life he had led". He mentions this story in his 1948 book A Tale of Pimlico which features another cadger.