FullReads

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. Mayow exclaimed, rising from her knees; “if it isn’t Hester already! Amelia, get out and dry yourself while I make a cup of tea.”

Hester took a step forward, but paused at a sound of dismal bumping on the staircase leading up from the passage.

“That’s Elizabeth Ann,” said Mrs. Mayow composedly, “or Heber, or both. We shall know when they get to the bottom. My dear, you must be perishing for a cup of tea. Oh, it’s Elizabeth Ann! Cherry, go and smack her, and tell her what I’ll do if she falls downstairs again. It’s all Matthew Henry’s fault.” Here she turned on the naked urchin with the churchwarden pipe. “If he’d only been home to his time–“

“I was listening to Zeke Penhaligon,” said Matthew Henry (aged eight). “He’s home to-day in the Touch-me-not.”

“He’s no good to King nor country,” said Mrs. Mayow.

“He was telling me about a man that got swallowed by a whale–“

“Go away with your Jonahses!” sneered one of his sisters.

“It wasn’t Jonah. This man’s name was Jones–Captain Jones, from Dundee. A whale swallowed him; but, as it happened, the whale had swallowed a cask just before, and the cask stuck in its stomach. So whatever the whale swallowed after that went into the cask, and did the whale no good. But Captain Jones had plenty to eat till he cut his way out with a clasp-knife–“

“How could he?”

“That’s all you know. Zeke says he did. A whale always turns that way up when he’s dying. So Captain Jones cut his way into daylight, when, what does he see but a sail, not a mile away! He fell on his knees–“