ting telescope_). At sea they have less dust at least:
that's so much comfort.

KIT. Sweetheart, ahoy!

ARETHUSA. Kit!

KIT. Arethusa!

ARETHUSA. My Kit! Home again--O my love!--home again to me!

KIT. As straight as wind and tide could carry me!

ARETHUSA. O Kit, my dearest. O Kit--O! O!

KIT. Hey? Steady, lass: steady, I say. For goodness' sake, ease it off.

ARETHUSA. I will, Kit--I will. But you came so sudden.

KIT. I thought ten months of it about preparation enough.

ARETHUSA. Ten months and a week; you haven't counted the days as I have.
Another day gone, and one day nearer to Kit: that has been my almanac.
How brown you are! how handsome!

KIT. A pity you can't see yourself! Well, no, I'll never be handsome:
brown I may be, never handsome. But I'm better than that, if the
proverb's true; for I'm ten hundred thousand fathoms deep in love. I
bring you a faithful sailor. What! you don't think much of that for a
curiosity? Well, that's so: you're right; the rarity is in the girl
that's worth it ten times over. Faithful? I couldn't help it if I tried!
No, sweetheart, and I fear nothing: I don't know what fear is, but just
of losing you. (_Starting._) Lord, that's not the Admiral?

ARETHUSA. Aha, Mr. Dreadnought! you see you fear my father.

KIT. That I do. But, thank goodness, it's nobody. Kiss me: no, I won't
kiss you: kiss _me_. I'll give you a present for that. See!

ARETHUSA. A wedding-ring!

KIT. My mother's. Will you take it?

ARETHUSA. Yes, will I--and give myself for it.

KIT. Ah, if we could only count upon your father! He's a man every inch
of him; but he can't endure Kit French.

ARETHUSA. He hasn't learned to know you, Kit, as I have, nor yet do you
know him. He seems hard and violent; at heart he is only a man
overwhelmed with sorrow. Why else, when he looks at me and does not know
that I observe him, should his face change, and fill with such
tenderness, that I could weep to see him? Why, when he walks in his
sleep, as he does almost every night, his eyes open and beholding
nothing, why should he cry so pitifully on my mother's name? Ah, if you
could hear him then, you would say yourself: Here is a man that has
loved; here is a man that will be kind to lovers.

KIT. Is that so? Ay, it's a hard thing to lose your wife; ay, that must
cut the heart indeed. But for all that, my lass, your father is keen for
the doubloons.

ARETHUSA. Right, Kit: and small blame to him. There is only