Awh, Reuben, my dear," sighed Joan one evening as, Eve having gone to
see Adam, the two walked out toward the little spot where Jerrem lay,
and as they went discussed Joan's near departure, "I wish to goodness
you'd pack up yer alls and come 'longs to Polperro home with me: 't 'ud
be ever so much better than stayin' to this gashly London, where there
ain't a blow o' air that's fresh to draw your breath in."

"Why, nonsense!" said Reuben: "you wouldn't have me if I'd come."

"How not have 'ee?" exclaimed Joan. "Why, if so be I thought you'd come
I'd never stir from where I be until I got the promise of it."

"But there wouldn't be nothin' for me to do," said Reuben.

"Why, iss there would--oceans," returned Joan. "Laws! I knaws clocks by
scores as hasn't gone for twenty year and more. Us has got two
ourselves, that wan won't strike and t' other you can't make tick."

Reuben smiled: then, growing more serious, he said, "But do you know,
Joan, that yours isn't the first head it's entered into about going down
home with you? I've had a mind toward it myself many times of late."

"Why, then, do come to wance," said Joan excitedly; "for so long as they
leaves me the house there'll be a home with me and Uncle Zebedee, and
I'll go bail for the welcome you'll get gived 'ee there."

Reuben was silent, and Joan, attributing this to some hesitation over
the plan, threw further weight into her argument by saying, "There's the
chapel too, Reuben. Only to think o' the sight o' good you could do
praichin' to 'em and that! for, though it didn't seem to make no odds
before, I reckons there's not a few that wants, like me, to be told o'
some place where they treats folks better than they does down here
below."

"Joan," said Reuben after a pause, speaking out of his own thoughts and
paying no heed to the words she had been saying, "you know all about Eve
and me, don't you?"

Joan nodded her head.

"How I've felt about her, so that I believe the hold she's got on me no
one on earth will ever push her off from."

"Awh, poor sawl!" sighed Joan compassionately: "I've often had a feelin'
for what you'd to bear, and for this reason too--that I knaws myself
what 'tis to be ousted from the heart you'm cravin' to call yer own."

"Why, yes, of course," said Reuben briskly: "you were set down for Adam
once, weren't you?"

"Awh, and there's they to Polperro--mother amongst 'em, too--who'll tell
'ee now that if Eve had never shawed her fa