and
hurly-burly, to the island that has been four-and-twenty hours cut
off from it--like the throbbing and bounding globules of fresh blood
fetching life from the fountain-head to some half-severed limb. It is an
hour of tremendous vitality, coming once a day, when the little island
pulsates like a living thing. But that evening, as always since the time
of the separation, Mrs. Quiggin was unmoved by it. With a book in her
hand she was sitting by the open window fingering the pages, but looking
listlessly over the tops of them to the line of the sea and sky, and
asking herself if she should not go home to her father's house on the
morrow. She had reached that point of her reverie at which something
told her that she should, and something else told her that she should
not, when down came Jenny Crow upon her troubled quiet, like the rush of
an evening breeze.

"Such news!" cried Jenny. "I've seen him again."

Mrs. Quiggin's book dropped suddenly to her lap. "Seen him?" she said
with bated breath.

"You remember--the Manx sailor on the Head," said Jenny.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Quiggin, languidly, and her book went back to before her
face.

"Been to Laxey to look at the big wheel," said Jenny; "and found the
Manxman coming back in the same coach. We were the only passengers, and
so I heard everything. Didn't I tell you that he must be in trouble?"

"And is he?" said Mrs. Quiggin, monotonously.

"My dear," said Jenny, "he's married."

"I'm very sorry," said Mrs. Quiggin, with a listless look toward the
sea. "I mean," she added more briskly, "that I thought you liked him
yourself."

"Liked him!" cried Jenny. "I loved him. He's splendid, he's glorious,
he's the simplest, manliest, tenderest, most natural creature in the
world. But it's just my luck--another woman has got him. And such
a woman, too! A nagger, a shrew, a cat, a piece of human flint, a
thankless wretch, whose whole selfish body isn't worth the tip of his
little finger."

"Is she so bad as that?" said Mrs. Quiggin, smiling feebly above the top
edge of her book, which covered her face up to the mouth.

"My dear," said Jenny, solemnly, "she has turned him out of the house."

"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Quiggin; and away went the book on to the
sofa.

Then Jenny told a woeful tale, her eyes flashing, her lips quivering,
and her voice ringing with indignation. And, anxious to hit hard,
she hovered so closely over the truth as sometimes to run the risk of
u