ares 'en in the face."

"An' her features look best from the left side, as everybody knows."

"I reckon, if he's chosen minister, that Lizzie'll have 'en," said a
tall, lanky girl. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and engaged to a
young tin-smith. Having laid aside ambition on her own account, she
flung in this remark as an apple of discord.

"Jenifer Hosken has a chance. He's fair-skinned hissel', an' Lizzie's
too near his own colour. Black's mate is white, as they say."

"There's Sue Tregraine. She'll have more money than either, when her
father dies."

"What, marry one o' Ruan!" the speaker tittered despitefully.

"Why not?"

The only answer was a shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy
across the diminutive harbour, or perhaps I should say that Troy looks
down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he
says, "Across the water," with as much implied contempt as though he
meant Botany Bay. There is no cogent reason for this, except that the
poorer class at Ruan earns its livelihood by fishing. In the eyes of
its neighbours the shadow of this lonely calling is cast upwards upon
its wealthier inhabitants. Troy depends on commerce, and in the days of
which I write employed these wealthier men of Ruan to build ships for
it. Further it did not condescend. Intermarriage between the towns was
almost unheard of, and even now it is rare. Yet they are connected by a
penny ferry.

"Her father's a shipbuilder," urged Sue Tregraine's supporter.

"He might so well keep crab pots, for all the chance she'll have."

Now there was a Ruan girl standing just outside this group, and she
heard what was said. Her name was Nance Trewartha and her father was a
fisherman, who did in fact keep crab-pots. Moreover, she was his only
child, and helped him at his trade. She could handle a boat as well as
a man, she knew every sea mark up and down the coast for thirty miles,
she could cut up bait, and her hands were horny with handling ropes from
her childhood. But on Sundays she wore gloves, and came across the
ferry to chapel, and was as wise as any of her sex. She had known
before coming out of her pew that the young minister had a well shaped
back to his head and a gold ring on his little finger with somebody's
hair in the collet, under a crystal. She was dark, straight, and lissom
of figure, with ripe lips and eyes as black as sloes, and she hoped that
the hair in the minister's ring was