h,
the only one anywhere in that neighborhood.

"I can't look at skies, and that--have seen too many of them. You young
folk, go and chirp under the tree. What I want is a little rum and
water."

With these words the tanner went into his bower, where he kept a good
store of materials in moss; and the plaited ivy of the narrow entrance
shook with his voice, and steps, and the decision of his thoughts. For
he wanted to see things come to a point, and his only way to do it was
to get quite out of sight. Such fools the young people of the age were
now!

While his thoughts were such, or scarcely any better, his partner in
life came down the walk, with a heap of little things which she thought
needful for the preservation of the tanner, and she waddled a little and
turned her toes out, for she as well was roundish.

"Ah, you ought to have Sue. Where is Sue?" said Master Popplewell.
"Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your
back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash."

Mrs. Popplewell grumbled, but obeyed; for she saw that her lord had
his reasons. So Mary and Robin were left outside, quite as if they were
nothing to any but themselves. Mary was aware of all this manoeuvring,
and it brought a little frown upon her pretty forehead, as if she
were cast before the feet of Robin Lyth; but her gentleness prevailed,
because they meant her well. Under the weeping-ash there was a little
seat, and the beauty of it was that it would not hold two people. She
sat down upon it, and became absorbed in the clouds that were busy with
the sunset.

These were very beautiful, as they so often are in the broken weather
of the autumn; but sailors would rather see fair sky, and Robin's fair
heaven was in Mary's eyes. At these he gazed with a natural desire to
learn what the symptoms of the weather were; but it seemed as if little
could be made out there, because everything seemed so lofty: perhaps
Mary had forgotten his existence.

Could any lad of wax put up with this, least of all a daring mariner?
He resolved to run the cargo of his heart right in, at the risk of all
breakers and drawn cutlasses; and to make a good beginning he came up
and took her hand. The tanner in the bower gave approval with a cough,
like Cupid with a sneeze; then he turned it to a snore.

"Mary, why do you carry on like this?" the smuggler inquired, in a very
gentle voice. "I have done nothing to offend you, have I? That would