--so to speak.

"Oh, Captain Tugwell, are you at work still? Why, you really ought to
have gone with the smacks. But perhaps you sent your son instead. I
am so glad to see you! It is such nice company to hear you! I did not
expect to be left alone, like this."

"If you please, miss, it isn't father at all. Father is gone with the
fishing long ago. It is only me, Daniel, if you please, miss."

"No, Daniel, I am not pleased at all. I am quite surprised that you
should work so late. It scarcely seems respectable."

At this the young man was so much amazed that he could only stare while
she walked off, until the clear duty of righting himself in her good
opinion struck him. Then he threw on his coat and ran after her.

"If you please, Miss Dolly--will you please, Miss Dolly?" he called, as
she made off for the stepping-stones; but she did not turn round, though
her name was "Miss Dolly" all over Springhaven, and she liked it. "You
are bound to stop, miss," he said, sternly; and she stopped, and cried,
"What do you mean by such words to me?"

"Not any sort of harm, miss," he answered, humbly, inasmuch as she had
obeyed him; "and I ask your pardon for speaking so. But if you think
twice you are bound to explain what you said concerning me, now just."

"Oh, about your working so late, you mean. I offered good advice to you.
I think it is wrong that you should go on, when everybody else has left
off long ago. But perhaps your father makes you."

"Father is a just man," said young Tugwell, drawing up his own
integrity; "now and then he may take a crooked twist, or such like; but
he never goeth out of fair play to his knowledge. He hath a-been hard
upon me this day; but the main of it was to check mother of her ways.
You understand, miss, how the women-folk go on in a house, till the
other women hear of it. And then out-of-doors they are the same as
lambs."

"It is most ungrateful and traitorous of you to your own mother to talk
so. Your mother spoils you, and this is all the thanks she gets! Wait
till you have a wife of your own, Master Daniel!"

"Wait till I am dead then I may, Miss Dolly," he answered, with a depth
of voice which frightened her for a moment; and then he smiled and said,
"I beg your pardon," as gracefully as any gentleman could say it; "but
let me see you safe to your own gate; there are very rough people about
here now, and the times are not quite as they used to be, when we were
a-fighting daily."