never to answer him at all; and he kept up
his shouting till he got attended to--till she shook him by the arm, or
thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was one of the
few blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put on his head
he stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed together
through the gate.

He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she
appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that infirm
bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in the
fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the
street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending
imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the
sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a
neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within
memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky,
walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the
cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and,
looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would
recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait.
Captain Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his
head to see how they got on in their promenade.

He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These sheets
were read in foreign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bessie.
At the same time he seemed to think that his son was in England--so
near to Colebrook that he would of course turn up "to-morrow." Bessie,
without committing herself to that opinion in so many words, argued that
in that case the expense of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd
had better spend that weekly half-crown on himself. She declared she did
not know what he lived on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast
him down for a time. "They all do it," he pointed out. There was a whole
column devoted to appeals after missing relatives. He would bring the
newspaper to show her. He and his wife had advertised for years; only
she was an impatient woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very
day after her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she might have
been here now, with no more than one day more to wait. "You are not an
impatient woman, my dear."

"I've no patience with you sometimes," she would say.