but
whether on her account or yours it was impossible to say.

John looked at her awkwardly, and drummed with one foot on the limeash
floor.

"He wanted you to marry me," he blurted out. "I--I reckon I've wanted
that, too ... oh, yes, for a long time!"

She put both hands behind her--one of them still grasped the
polishing-cloth--came over, and gazed long into his face.

"You mean it," she said at length. "You are a good man. I like you. I
suppose I must."

She turned--still with her hands behind her--walked to the window, and
stood pondering the harbour and the vessels at anchor and the rooks
flying westward. John would have followed and kissed her, but divined
that she wished nothing so little. So he backed towards the door, and
said--

"There's nothing to wait for. 'Twouldn't do to be married from the
same house, I expect. I was thinking--any time that's agreeable--if
you was to lodge across the harbour for awhile, with the
Mayows--Cherry Mayow's a friend of yours--we could put up the banns
and all shipshape."

He found himself outside the door, mopping his forehead.

This was the second rash thing that John Penaluna did.

II

It was Midsummer Eve, and a Saturday, when Hester knocked at the
Mayows' green door on the Town Quay. The Mayows' house hung over the
tideway, and the _Touch-me-not_ schooner, home that day from Florida
with a cargo of pines, and warped alongside the quay, had her foreyard
braced aslant to avoid knocking a hole in the Mayows' roof.

A Cheap Jack's caravan stood at the edge of the quay. The Cheap Jack
was feasting inside on fried ham rasher among his clocks and mirrors
and pewter ware; and though it wanted an hour of dusk, his assistant
was already lighting the naphtha-lamps when Hester passed.

Steam issued from the Mayows' doorway, which had a board across it
to keep the younger Mayows from straggling. A voice from the steam
invited her to come in. She climbed over the board, groped along the
dusky passage, pushed open a door and looked in on the kitchen, where,
amid clouds of vapour, Mrs. Mayow and her daughter Cherry were washing
the children. Each had a tub and a child in it; and three children,
already washed, skipped around the floor stark naked, one with a long
churchwarden pipe blowing bubbles which the other two pursued. In the
far corner, behind a deal table, sat Mr. Mayow, and patiently tuned a
fiddle--a quite hopeless task in that atmosphere.

"My gracious!" Mrs.