o but marry her?"

"Aye!... Aye! I thought of marrying her, if she'd have me.... But we
hardly know each other yet ... and maybe I'm too young...."

"If you're able to handle a ship, you're able to handle a woman, young
lad. And what time is better for marriage nor the first flush of youth?
Sure you grow together like the leaves upon the tree. Let you not be
putting it off now, but spring like a hero."

"But isn't the matter of her faith between us, woman of the house?"

"And sure that can be fixed later. Will the priest mind, do you think,
so long as she does her duty? And a sixpence in the plate on Sunday is
better nor a brown ha'penny, and a half-sovereign at Easter will soothe
black anger like healing grass. Very open in thought I am, and I knowing
the seven pangs of love. Let you go to your own clergyman, and she'll go
with you, I'll warrant, so eaten is she by love."

"My people, woman o' the house--"

"Your people, is it? Sure it isn't your people is marrying my grand
young daughter, but you yourself. The old are crabbit, and they do be
thinking more of draining a field, or of the price of flax, nor of the
pain and delights of love. And it's always objections. But there can be
no objecting when the job's finished."

She looked at him shrewdly.

"A grand influence, a grand steadying influence is marriage on a sailing
man. It keeps you from spending your money in foreign ports, where you
only buy trickery for your silver. And when you have a wife at home,
you'll have little truck with fancy women, who have husbands behind the
screen, sometimes, and them with knives.... So I've heard tell.... Or
maybe get an evil sickness. Listen to an old woman has wisdom, bold
lad."

"When I come from my voyage...."

"Dark lad, if anything happens to you, and you drowning in the black
water, the great regret that will be on you and the water gurgling into
your lungs, and, 'Wasn't I the fool of the world,' you'll say, 'that
might have heard the crickets singing in the night-time and my white
love by my side? And might have had power of kissing and lovemaking, but
was young and foolish, and lay be my lee lone....'"

But this was the wrong tack, the old woman noticed, and came about.

"And all the time you're away, my daughter will be pining for you,
drooping and pining, my grand young daughter, and the spring will go out
of her step and the light from her eyes and the luster from the hair
that's a wonder to all.... Oh,