Lovibond.

"Yes, did I," said Davy, "and her spaking, too, and her whispering as
well, but it wasn't music that brought love in at my ear--my left ear it
was, Matey."

"Whatever was it then, Capt'n," said Lovibond.

"Milk," said Davy.

"Milk?" cried Lovibond, drawing up in their walk.

"Just milk," said Davy again. "Come along and I tell you. It was this
way. Ould Kinvig kep' two cows, and we were calling the one Whitie and
the other Brownie. Nelly and me was milking the pair of them, and she
was like a young goat, that full of tricks, and I was same as a big
calf, that shy. One evening--it was just between the lights--that's
when girls is like kittens, terr'ble full of capers and
mischievousness--Nelly rigged up her kopie--that's her
milking-stool--agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking
Brownie and me milking Whitie. 'What she agate of now?' thinks I, but
she was looking as innocent as the bas'es themselves, with their ould
solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there
wasn't no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant,
and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of
the milk in the pails. And I got to draeming same as I was used of, with
the smell of the hay stealing down from the loft and the breath of
the cows coming puff when they were blowing, and the tits in my hands
agoing, when the rattle-rattle aback of me stopped sudden, and I felt a
squish in my ear like the syringe at the doctor's. 'What's that?' thinks
I. 'Is it deaf I'm going?' But it's deaf I'd been and blind, too, and
stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing
like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie's milk going
trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. 'It's not deafness,' thinks
I; 'it's love'; and my breath was coming and going and making noises
like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her,
and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as dry as Kinvig
when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a gale
of wind through it, and you couldn't see a face at the one of us for
swansdown. That's how Nelly and me 'came engage."

He was laughing noisily by this time, and crying alternately, with a
merry shout and a husky croak, "Aw, dear, aw, dear; the days that was,
sir--the days that was!"

Lovibond let him rattle on, and he talked of Nelly for an hour. He had
stories withou