"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would
only tell us."
"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father
was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the
smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but
goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his
wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps
him in Dover Jail."
"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"
"_She_ didn't do nothing," said the old man. "It's a woman's place not
to do nothing till she's told to. He'd done so well at the smuggling,
he'd saved enough by his honest toil to take a little public. So she
sets there awaitin' and attendin' to customers--for well she knowed him,
as he wasn't the chap to let a bit of a jail stand in the way of his
station in life. Well, it was three weeks to a day after the wedding,
there comes a dusty chap to the 'Peal of Bells' door. That was the sign
over the public, you understand."