f
before it's all gone, and go and live with her--you and she together
somewheres--some quiet place--and make out somehow--women's mortal
clever at rigging up yarns that do no harm--make out that somebody
belonging to you is dead--it can't kill nobody to say that ma'am--and
left you a bit of a fortune out of hand----"

Davy's restless foot was digging away at the carpet while he was
stammering out these broken words:

"Haven't you no ould uncle, ma'am, that would do for the like of that?"

Jenny had to struggle with herself not to leap up and hug Capt'n Davy
then and there, "What a ninny the girl was!" she thought. But she said
aloud, as well as she could for her throat that was choking her, "I see
what you mean, Captain Quiggin. But, Cap tain----"

"Ma'am?" said Davy.

"If you have so much thought--(_gulp, gulp_)--for your wife's welfare
(_gulp_), you--must love her still (_gulp, gulp_)?

"I daren't say no, ma'am," said Davy, with downcast eyes.

"And if you love her, however deeply she may have offended you, surely
you should never leave her. Come, now, Captain, forgive and forget; she
is only a woman, you know."

"That's just where the shoe pinches, ma'am, so I'm taking it off. Out
yonder it'll be easier to forgive. And if it'll be harder to forget,
what matter?"

Jenny's eyes were beginning to fill.

"No use crying over spilled milk, is it, ma'am? The heart-ache is a sort
of colic that isn't cured by drops."

Jenny was breaking down fast.

"Aw, the heart's a quare thing, ma'am. Got its hunger same as anything
else. Starve it, and it'll know why. Gives you a kind of a sinking at
the pit of your stomach, ma'am. Did you never feel it, ma'am?"

Davy's speech was rude enough, but that only made its emotion the more
touching to Jenny. Between gulp and gulp she tried to say that if he
went away he would never be happy again.

"Happy, ma'am? D'ye say happy? I'm not happy _now,_" said Davy.

"It isn't everybody would think so, Captain," said Jenny, "considering
how you spend your evenings--singing and laughing----"

"Laughing! More cry till wool, ma'am, same as clipping a pig."

"So your new friends, Captain, those that your riches have brought
you--"

"Friends? D'ye say friends? Them wastrels! What are they? Nothing but
a parcel of Betty Quilleash's baby's stepmothers. And I'm nothing but
Betty Quilleash's baby myself, ma'am; that's what I am."

The stalwart fellow did not look much like anybody's in