the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added
with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set
things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it
had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to
be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm
blessed if I can tell 'ee."

"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.

"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or
'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the
notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if
his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never
you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to
Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee
without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."

Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in,
for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself
alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she
naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat
watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner
construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into
displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods
of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the
midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive
nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.

"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."

But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.

"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single
day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a
look full of inquiry and meaning.

Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the
things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the
way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the
companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task,
and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch
his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation
was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a
foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered
to a fa