w!" she was saying, as I came into focus of their dispute. "That's the
moral of a mahn, it is. Yer ter work when ye like an' ter play when ye
like, and the girls hahs ter sit and dangle their heels fer yer honours'
convenience."

"I doan't arlays get my likes, Jenny, or I shud a' met you yesterday."

"Ay, as yer promused."

"We worked ower late pulling the lias, I tell yer. 'Twould 'a' meant half
a day's wages garn if I'd com', and theer, my dear, 'ud been reason
for another delay in oor getting spliced."

"You're fine and vulgar, upon my word! A little free, too, and a little
mistook. I've no mind ter get spliced, as yer carls it, wi' a chap as
cannot see's way ter keep tryst."

"Yer doan't mean thart?"

"Doan't I? Yer'll answer fer me in everything, 't seems. But yer've got
enough ter answer fer yerself, Jack Curtice. I'm none of the sort ter go
or stay at anny mahn's pleasure. There's kerps and dabs in the sea yet,
Jack Curtice; and fatter ones ter fish fer, too."

"But yer doan't understand."

"I understand my own vally; and that isn't ter be kep' drarging my toes
on the Parade half an a'rtenoon fer a chap as thinks he be better
engaged summer else."

"And yer gone ter break wi' me fer thart?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Curtice," she said, and jerked her nose high and walked
off.

Now here was an inconsistent jade, and I felt sorry and relieved for the
sake of the young fellow.

He stood, after the manner of his kind, amazed and speechless. Man's
saving faculty of logic was in him, but tongue-tied; and he could not
express his intuitive recognition of the self-contradictory. Such natures
frequently make reason articulate through a blow--a rough way of knocking
her into shape, but commonly effectual. Jack, however, was evidently a
large gentle swain of the dumb-suffering type--one of those unresisting
leviathans of good-humour, upon whom a woman loves to vent that passion
of the illogical which an antipathetic sex has vainly tried to laugh her
out of conceit with.

I peered a little longer, and presently saw Mr. Curtice walk off in a
state compound of bewilderment and abject depression.

This was the beginning to me of an interest apart from that which had
brought me to King's Cobb. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place of
that fictitious one that had as yet failed to mark an epoch by so much as
a scratch. I accepted the former as some solace for the intolerable
wrong inflicted upon me by the sea and Mis