bit of
very mild amusement with a male on her own account.

Martin Ball was known as 'the busy man of Little Silver,' and none but had
a good word for him. He was a yellow-whiskered, stout, red-faced and
blue-eyed chap with enough energy to drive a steamship. The folk marvelled
how he found time for all he undertook. He was Portreeve of the
district--an ancient title without much to it nowadays--and he was
huckster to a dozen farms for Okehampton Market. He also kept bees and
coneys and ran a market-garden of two acres. He served on the Parish
Council and he was vicar's warden. And numberless other small chores with
money to 'em he also undertook and performed most successful. And then, at
forty-two years of age, though not before, he began to feel a wife might
be worked into his life with advantage, and only regretted the needful
time to find and court the woman.

And even so, but for the temper of his old aunt, Mary Ball, who kept house
for him, he would have been content to carry on single-handed.

He knew the Warners very well and Jane had always made a great impression
on him by reason of her fearless ways and great powers and passionate love
of work; and though he came to see very soon that work was her only
passion, beyond her devoted attachment to her father, yet he couldn't but
mark that such a woman would be worth a gold-mine to any man who weren't
disposed to put womanly qualities first. Of love he knew less than one of
his working bees, but maybe had a dim vision at the back of his mind about
it, which showed him clear enough that with Jane Warner, love-making could
never amount to much. He measured the one against t'other, however, and
felt upon the whole that such a woman would be a tower of strength if she
could only be got away from her parent.

And so he showed her how he was a good bit interested, and had speech with
her, off and on, and made it pretty clear in his scant leisure that she
could come to him if she was minded. It pleased her a good bit to find
such a remarkable man as Ball had found time to think upon her, and she
also liked his opinions and his valiant hunger for hard work. She'd even
let herself think of him for five minutes sometimes before she went to
sleep of a night, and what there was of woman in her felt a mild
satisfaction to know there lived a man on earth she'd got the power to
interest. Marriage was far outside her scheme, of course; but there's a
lot that wouldn't marry fo