Besides, it's really good fun to
watch how such a pretty plot will work itself out;--as good as a pack
of harriers with a cold scent and a squatted hare. So, live and let
live. Only, Thomas Thurnall, if you go for to come for to go for to
make such an abominable ass of yourself with that young lady any more,
like a miserable school-boy, you will be pleased to make tracks, and
vanish out of these parts for ever. For my purse can't afford to have
you marrying a schoolmistress in your impoverished old age; and my
character, which also is my purse, can't afford worse."
One word of Grace's had fixed itself in Tom's memory. What did she
mean by "her two?"
He contrived to ask Willis that very evening.
"Oh, don't you know, sir? She had a young brother drowned, a long
while ago, when she was sixteen or so. He went out fishing on the
Sabbath, with another like him, and both were swamped. Wild young
lads, both, as lads will be. But she, sweet maid, took it so to heart,
that she never held up her head since; nor will, I think, at times, to
her dying day."
"Humph! Was she fond of the other lad, then?"
"Sir," said Willis, "I don't think it's fair like,--not decent, if
you'll excuse an old sailor,--to talk about young maids' affairs, that
they wouldn't talk of themselves, perhaps not even to themselves. So I
never asked any questions myself."
"And think it rude in me to ask any. Well, I believe you're right,
good old gentleman that you are.
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