iggled and spat, and then muttered, "You go bail."

"You have known her since you were children, haven't you?"

Davy's hard face thawed suddenly, and he said, "Ay, since she wore
petticoats up to her knees, and I was a boy in a jacket, and we played
hop-skotch in the haggard, and double-my-duck agen the cowhouse gable.
Aw dear, aw dear! The sweet little thing she was then any way. Yellow
hair at her, and eyes like the sea, and a voice same as the throstle!
Well, well, to think, to think! Playing in the gorse and the ling
together, and the daisies and the buttercups--and then the curlews
whistling and the river singing like music, and the bees ahumoning--aw,
terr'ble sweet and nice. And me going barefoot, and her bare-legged, and
divil a hat at the one of us--aw, deary me, deary me! Wasn't much starch
at her in them ould days, mate."

"Is there now, captain?"

"Now? D'ye say _now_? My goodness! It's always hemming and humming and a
heise of the neck, and her head up like a Cochin-China, with a topknot,
and 'How d'ye do?' and cetererar and cetererar. Aw, smooth as an ould
threepenny bit--smooth astonishing. And partic'lar! My gough! You
couldn't call Tom to a cat afore her, but she'd be agate of you to make
it Thomas."

Lovibond smiled behind his big mustache.

"The rael ould Manx isn't good enough for her now. Well, I wasn't
objecting, not me. She's got the English tongue at her--that's all
right. Only I'll stick to what I'm used of. Job's patience went at last
and so did mine, and I arn't much of a Job neither."

"And what has made all this difference," said Lovibond.

"Why, the money, of coorse. It was the money that done it, bad sess to
it," said Davy, pitching the head of his pipe after the shank. "I went
out yonder to get it and I got it. Middling hard work, too, but no
matter. It was to be all for her. 'I'll come back, Nelly,' says I, 'and
we'll take Ballacry and have six craythurs and a pony, and keep a
girl to do for you, and you'll take your aise--only milking maybe, or
churning, but nothing to do no harm.' I was ten years getting it, and I
never took notions on no other girls neither. No, honor bright, thinks
I, Nelly's waiting for you, Davy. Always dreaming of her, 'cept when
them lazy black chaps wanted leathering, and that's a job that isn't
nothing without a bit of swearing at whiles. But at night, aw, at night,
mate, lying out on the deck in that heat like the miller's kiln, and
shelling your clot