e excitement in the Cove was intense; that for weeks
afterwards the women carried their silver teaspoons and chinaware to bed
with them; and I should explain that the housewives of Polreen are
inordinately proud of their teaspoons and chinaware--heirlooms which
mark the only degrees of social importance recognised among the
inhabitants of that happy Cove. A family there counts its teaspoons as
our old nobility counted its quarterings; a girl is judged to have made
a good, bad, or indifferent match by the number of teaspoons she
'marries into'; and the extreme act of disinheritance is symbolised, not
by the testamentary shilling, nor by erasing a name from the Family
Bible, but by alienating the family plate-basket. In short, teaspoons
are to the Covers what the salt-cellar was to the ancient Latin races.

"But at the time, though I could not help observing symptoms of
suppressed excitement, the Cove behaved with an outward calm which
struck me as highly creditable. To be sure, the men seemed to spend an
extravagant amount of their time in the tap-room of the inn, which
happened to be immediately beneath my sitting-room. Hour after hour the
sound of their muffled conversation ascended to me through the
planching, as I sat and studied--Dumas, I think. Low, monotonous,
untiring, it lasted from breakfast-time until nine o'clock at night,
when it ceased abruptly, the company dispersed, and each man went home
to reassure and protect his wife. I suppose some liquor was required to
start this conversation and keep it going, just as seamen use a
bucketful of water to start a ship's pump; but I must admit that during
my whole stay at Polreen I never saw an inhabitant who could be
described as the worse for drink.

"I did not know that this assemblage in the tap-room was unusual and
clean contrary to the men's habits, and therefore may be excused for not
guessing its significance. Nor was I familiar enough with Polreen to
note an even more frequent change in the atmosphere and routine of its
daily life. When the weather is fine, down there, the men put out to
sea and the women go about their work with smiles. When it blows, the
women go about their work, but resignedly and in a temper, which the men
avoid by ranging up shoulder to shoulder along the wall by the lifeboat
house, and gazing with approval at the weather; with approval, because
it relieves them of the fatigue of argument. But should the day break
doubtfully,