eemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony
was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. "Iss, her was a
nice woman," he said, "a gude wife to me; a gude wife: I hadn't no
complaint to make against she."

The one shabby sentence hit into me all his sorrow, that which remains
and that which has sunk into time.

* * * * *

The Mrs Widger that is, returned from the Dutch auction with an
elaborate badly-plated cruet. "Al'ays using up my saxpinces what I has
to slave for," said Tony.

"G'out! 'Tis jest what us wants."

"You won't never use it."

"We'll hae it out on thy birthday--there! Will that zatisfy thee?"

"Not afore then? I wer born at the end o' the year, an' that's why I
al'ays gets lef' behind."

"Not a day before thy birthday! What'll yu be saying if I buys sauces
to put in all they bottles?"

"Cut glass, is it?"

"No! What d'yu think?"

"What a woman 'tis! Gie yer Tony a kiss then."

"G'out yu fule!"

The wise fool took a kiss. We had a second supper and hot grog. We were
merry. But when I said _Good night_, I saw in Tony's eyes a recognition
that I had understood (so he felt, I think) some part of what he
seldom, if ever, brings up now to talk about.

Only a yarn about a man's first wife.... If so, why did I go to bed
feeling I had been privileged beyond the ordinary? Wives die every day;
worn out, most of them. There came into my mind's eye with these
thoughts a picture of the open sea; yet hardly a picture, for I was
there in the midst of it. On the waves and low-lying clouds, and
through the murk, was the glimmer of a light which, I felt, would make
everything plain, did it but increase. For a moment it flickered
up--and there, over the stormy sea, I saw death as a kindly illusion. I
do not understand the wherefore of my little vision, nor why it made my
heart give one curious great thump....

A cats' courtship beneath my window broke it off.

6

[Sidenote: _THE "MOONDAISY"_]

Five or six years ago, when I was ill and left Seacombe, as I thought,
for good, I did not relish selling the _Moondaisy_. I was too fond
of her. So I gave her to the two men who had asked for the first and
second refusals of her, and neither of whom possessed a small sailing
boat. But I reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which
overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her
much. Neither man looked after