ovibond. He found him walking
too and fro in the soft turf outside the window. The night was calm and
beautiful. In the sky a sea of stars and a great full moon; on the
land a line of gas jets, and on the dark bay a point here and there of
rolling light. No sound but the distant hum of traffic in the town,
the inarticulate shout of a sailor on one of the ships outside, and
the rock-row rock-row of the oars in the rol-locks of some unseen boat
gliding into the harbor below.

Davy drew a long breath. "So you think," said he, "that the sweet woman
in the church is loving her husband in spite of all?"

"Fear she is, poor fool," said Lovibond.

"Bless her!" said Davy, beneath his breath. "D'ye think, now," said he,
"that all women are like that?"

"Many are--too many," said Lovibond.

"Equal to forgiving and forgetting, eh?" said Davy.

"Yes--the sweet simpletons--and taking the men back as well," said
Lovibond.

"Extraordinary!" said Davy. "Aw, matey, matey, men's only muck where
women comes. Women is reg'lar eight-teen-carat goold. It's me to know
it too. There was the mawther herself now. My father was a bit of a
rip--God forgive his son for saying it--and once he went trapsing after
a girl and got her into trouble. An imperent young hussy anyway, but no
matter. Coorse the mawther wouldn't have no truck with her; but one day
she died sudden, and then the child hadn't nobody but the neighbors to
look to it. 'Go for it, Davy,' says the mawther to me. It was evening,
middling late after the herrings, and when I got to the kitchen windey
there was the little one atop of the bed in her nightdress saying her
bits of prayers; 'God bless mawther, and everybody,' and all to that.
She couldn't get out of the 'mawther' yet, being always used of it, and
there never was no 'father' in her little tex'es. Poor thing! she come
along with me, bless you, like a lammie that you'd pick out of the snow.
Just hitched her hands round my neck and fell asleep in my arms
going back, with her putty face looking up at the stars same as an
angel's--soft and woolly to your lips like milk straight from the cow,
and her little body smelling sweet and damp, same as the breath of a
calf. And when the mawther saw me she smoothed her brat and dried her
hands, and catched at the little one, and chuckled over her, and clucked
at her and kissed her, with her own face slushed like rain, till yer'd
have thought nothing but it was one of her own that had