Aw dear, aw dear! The sweet little thing she was then any way. Yellow hair at her, and eyes like the sea, and a voice same as the throstle!

Well, well, to think, to think! Playing in the gorse and the ling together, and the daisies and the b.u.t.tercups--and then the curlews whistling and the river singing like music, and the bees ahumoning--aw, terr'ble sweet and nice. And me going barefoot, and her bare-legged, and divil a hat at the one of us--aw, deary me, deary me! Wasn't much starch at her in them ould days, mate."

"Is there now, captain?"

"Now? D'ye say _now_? My goodness! It's always hemming and humming and a heise of the neck, and her head up like a Cochin-China, with a topknot, and 'How d'ye do?' and cetererar and cetererar. Aw, smooth as an ould threepenny bit--smooth astonishing. And partic'lar! My gough! You couldn't call Tom to a cat afore her, but she'd be agate of you to make it Thomas."

Lovibond smiled behind his big mustache.

"The rael ould Manx isn't good enough for her now. Well, I wasn't objecting, not me. She's got the English tongue at her--that's all right. Only I'll stick to what I'm used of. Job's patience went at last and so did mine, and I arn't much of a Job neither."

"And what has made all this difference," said Lovibond.

"Why, the money, of coorse. It was the money that done it, bad sess to it," said Davy, pitching the head of his pipe after the shank. "I went out yonder to get it and I got it. Middling hard work, too, but no matter. It was to be all for her. 'I'll come back, Nelly,' says I, 'and we'll take Ballacry and have six craythurs and a pony, and keep a girl to do for you, and you'll take your aise--only milking maybe, or churning, but nothing to do no harm.' I was ten years getting it, and I never took notions on no other girls neither. No, honor bright, thinks I, Nelly's waiting for you, Davy. Always dreaming of her, 'cept when them lazy black chaps wanted leathering, and that's a job that isn't nothing without a bit of swearing at whiles. But at night, aw, at night, mate, lying out on the deck in that heat like the miller's kiln, and sh.e.l.ling your clothes piece by piece same as a bushel of oats, and looking up at the stars atwinkling in the sky, and spotting one of them, and saying to yourself quietlike, so as them n.i.g.g.e.rs won't hear, 'That's star is atwinkling over Nelly, too, and maybe she's watching it now.'

It seemed as if we wasn't so far apart then. Somehow it made the world a taste smaller. 'Shine on, my beauty,' thinks I, 'shine down straight into Nelly's room, and if she's awake tell her I'm coming, and if she's asleep just make her dream that I'm loving n.o.body else till her.' But, chut! It was myself that was dreaming. Drink up! She married me for my money, so I'm making it fly."

"And when it's gone--what then?" said Lovibond. "Will you go back to her!"

"Maybe so, maybe no."

"Will anything be the better because the money's spent?"

"G.o.d knows."

"Will she be as sweet and good as she once was when you are as poor as you were?"

Davy heaved up to his feet. "What's the use of thinking of the like of that?" he cried. "My money's mine, I baked for it out in that oven. Now I'm spending it, and what for shouldn't I? Here goes--healths apiece!"

Next day Lovibond and Jenny Crow met on the pier. There they pondered the ticklish situation of their friends, and every word they said on it was pointed and punctuated by a sense of their own relations.

"It's plain that the good fools love each other," said Jenny.

"Quite plain," said Lovibond.

"Heigho! It's mad work being angry with somebody you are dying to love,"

said Jenny.

"Colney Hatch is nothing to it," said Lovibond.

"Smaller things have parted people for years," said Jenny.

"Yes; five years," said Lovibond.

"The longer apart the wider the breach, and the harder to cover it,"

said Jenny.

"Just so," said Lovibond.

"They must meet. Of course they'll fight like cat and dog, but better that than this separation. Time leaves bigger scars than claws ever made. Now, couldn't we bring them together?"

"Just what I was thinking," said Lovibond.

"I'm sure he must be a dear, simple soul, though I've never set eyes on him," said Jenny.

"And I'm certain she must be as sweet as an angel, though I've never seen her," said Lovibond.

Jenny shot a jealous glance at her companion, then cracked two fingers and said eagerly, "There you are--there's the idea in a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l.

Now _if each could see the other through other eyes!_"

"The very thing!" said Lovibond.

"Then why don't you give me your arm at once, and let me think me over?"

said Jenny. In less than an hour these two wise heads had devised a scheme to bring Capt'n Davy and his bride together. What that scheme was and how it worked let those who read discover.

CHAPTER III.

Six days pa.s.sed as with feet of lead, and Capt'n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin were still in Douglas. They could not tear themselves away. Morning and night the good souls were seized by a morbid curiosity about their servants' sweethearts. "Seen Peggy lately?" Capt'n Davy would say. "I suppose you've not come across Willie Quarrie lately?" Mrs. Quiggin would ask. Thus did they squeeze to the driest pulp every opportunity of hearing anything of each other.

Jenny Crow, with Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona, had not yet set eyes on Captain Davy, and Lovibond, with Captain Davy at Fort Ann, had never once seen Mrs. Quiggin. Jenny had said nothing of Lovibond to Nelly, and Lovibond had said nothing of Jenny to Davy.

Matters stood so when one evening Peggy Quine was dressing up her mistress's hair for dinner, and answering the usual question.

"Seen Willie Quarrie, ma'am? Aw 'deed, yes, ma'am; and it's shocking the stories he's telling me. The Capt'n's making the money fly. Bowls and beer, and cards and betting--it's ter'ble, ma'm, ter'ble. Somebody should hould him. He's distracted like. Giving to everybody as free as free. Parsons and preachers and the like--they're all at him, same as flies at a sheep with the rot."

"And what do people say, Peggy?"

"They say fools and their money is quickly parted ma'am."

"How dare you call anybody a fool, Peggy?"

"Aw it's not me, ma'am. It's them that's seeing him wasting his money like water through a pitchfork. And the dirts that's catching most is shouting loudest. 'Deed, ma'am, but his conduct is shocking."

"And what do people say is the cause of it, Peggy?"

"Lumps in his porridge, ma'am."

"What?"

"Yes, though, that's what Willie Quarrie is telling me. When a woman isn't just running even with her husband they call her lumps in his porridge. Aw, Willie's a feeling lad."

There was a pause after this disclosure, and then Mrs. Quiggin said in another voice, "Peggy, there's a strange gentleman staying with the Captain at Forte Ann, is there not?"

"Yes, ma'am; Mr. Loviboy."

"What is he like, Peggy?"

"Pepper and salt trowis, ma'am, and a morsel of hair on the tip of his chin."