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This don’t include Sal’s husband, though. Landlord Oke was one of the first to shake her by the hand as she landed, and the Mayor turned over the stakes to her there and then with a neat little speech. But Tailor Hancock went back home with all kinds of ugliness and uncharitableness working in his little heart. He cursed Regatta Day for an interruption to trade, and Saltash for a town given up to idleness and folly. A man’s business in this world was to toil for his living in the sweat of his brow; and so, half an hour later, he told his wife.

The crowd had brought her along to her house door: and there she left ’em with a word or two of thanks, and went in very quiet. Her victory had uplifted her, of course; but she knew that her man would be sore in his feelings, and she meant to let him down gently. She’d have done it, too, if he’d met her in the ordinary way: but when, after searching the house, she looked into the little back workshop and spied him seated on the bench there, cross-legged and solemn as an idol, stitching away at a waistcoat, she couldn’t hold back a grin.

“Why, whatever’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“Work,” says he, in a hollow voice. “Work is the matter. I can’t see a house–and one that used to be a happy home–go to rack and ruin without some effort to prevent it.”

“I wouldn’t begin on Regatta Day, if I was you,” says Sal cheerfully. “Has old Smithers been inquiring again about that waistcoat?”

“He have not.”

“Then he’s a patient man: for to my knowledge this is the third week you’ve been putting him off with excuses.”

“I thank the Lord,” says her husband piously, “that more work gets put on me than I can keep pace with. And well it is, when a man’s wife takes to wagering and betting and pulling in low boat-races to the disgrace of her sex. Someone must keep the roof over our heads: but the end may come sooner than you expect,” says he, and winds up with a tolerable imitation of a hacking cough.

“I took three pairs of soles and a brill in the trammel this very morning; and if you’ve put a dozen stitches in that old waistcoat, ’tis as much as ever! I can see in your eye that you know all about the race; and I can tell from the state of your back that you watched it from the Quay, and turned into the ‘Sailor’s Return’ for a drink. Hockaday got taken in over that blue-wash for his walls: it comes off as soon as you rub against it.”

“I’ll trouble you not to spy upon my actions, Madam,” says he.

“Man alive, I don’t mind your taking a glass now and then in reason–specially on Regatta Day! And as for the ‘Sailor’s Return,’ ’tis a respectable house. I hope so, anyhow, for we’ve ordered supper there to-night.”

“Supper! You’ve ordered supper at the ‘Sailor’s Return’?”

Sal nodded. “Just to celebrate the occasion. We thought, first-along, of the ‘Green Dragon’: but the ‘Dragon’s’ too grand a place for ease, and Bess allowed ‘twould look like showing off. She voted for cosiness: so the ‘Sailor’s Return’ it is, with roast ducks and a boiled leg of mutton and plain gin-and-water.”

“Settin’ yourselves up to be men, I s’pose?” he sneered.

“Not a bit of it,” answered Sal. “There’ll be no speeches.”

She went off to the kitchen, put on the kettle, and made him a dish of tea. In an ordinary way she’d have paid no heed to his tantrums: but just now she felt very kindly disposed t’wards everybody, and really wished to chat over the race with him–treating it as a joke now that her credit was saved, and never offering to crow over him. But the more she fenced about to be agreeable the more he stitched and sulked.