"What's she a-doing of now?"
"Blubbering."
"Why, that's what you said yesterday. She ar'n't been a-blubbering ever
since?"
"Yes, she have, Bart; and the day afore, and the day afore that. She's
done nothing else."
"I hates to see a woman cry," said the first speaker in a low, surly
growl, as he wrinkled his forehead all over and seated himself on the
edge of a three-legged table in the low-ceiled cottage of old Dell, the
smuggler, a roughly-built place at the head of one of the lonely coves
on the South Devon coast. The place was rough, for it had been built at
different times, of wreckwood which had come ashore; but the dwelling
was picturesque outside, and quaint, nautical, and deliriously clean
within, where Abel Dell, Mary's twin brother, a short, dark young
fellow, singularly like his sister, sat upon an old sea-chest forming a
netting-needle with a big clasp-knife, and his brow was also covered
with the lines of trouble.
He was a good-looking, sun-browned little fellow; and as he sat there in
his big fisher-boots thrust down nearly to the ankle, and a scarlet
worsted cap upon his black, crisp curls, his canvas petticoat and blue
shirt made him a study of which a modern artist would have been glad;
but I the early days of King George the First gentlemen of the palette
and brush did not set up white umbrellas in sheltered coves and turn the
inhabitants into models, so Abel Dell had not been transferred to
canvas, and went on carving his hardwood needle without looking up at
the man he called Bart.
There was not much lost, for Bartholomew Wrigley, at the age of thirty--
wrecker, smuggler, fisherman, sea-dog, anything by turn--was about as
ugly an athletic specimen of humanity as ever stepped. Nature and his
ancestors had been very unkind to him in the way of features, and
accidents by flood and fight had marred what required no disfigurement,
a fall of a spar having knocked his nose sidewise and broken the bridge,
while a chop from a sword in a smuggling affray had given him a divided
upper lip. In addition he always wore the appearance of being ashamed
of his height, and went about with a slouch that was by no means an
attraction to the fisher-girls of the place.
"Ay! If the old man had been alive--"
"'Stead o' drowned off Plymouth Hoo," growled Bart.
"In the big storm," continued Abel, "Polly would have had to swab them
eyes of hern."
"Ay! And if the old man had been alive, that snapper dandy captain,
with his boots and sword, would have had to sheer off, Abel, lad."
"'Stead o' coming jerry-sneaking about her when we was at sea, eh,
Bart?"
"Them's true words," growled the big, ugly fellow.