e accumulated hand-to-mouth
wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old
woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.

I was introduced to her--Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound
to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic
mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as
if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'

I went outdoors, leaving them to talk; helped Tony haul up the beach
his lumpy fourteen-foot sailing boat, the _Cock Robin_, and returned
with him to supper.

"Hullo, Gran Pinn!" he roared. "Yu here! Didn' know I'd got a new mate
for hauling up, did 'ee? Have her got 'ee yer drop o' stout eet? Us
two'll take 'ee home if yu drinks tu much."

"Oh yu...." screeched Mrs Pinn with facetious rage followed by a swift
collapse into company manners again.

"Thees yer be my mother-in-law, sir."

"Mr Whats-his-name knaws that, an' I knaws yu got he staying with
'ee--there!"

"Well then, gie us some supper then."

Mrs Pinn--'twas to be felt in the air--had been hearing all about me.
Beside her glass of stout and ale, she looked a little less prim and
defiant. But she was still on company manners. She sat delicately, on
the extreme edge of a chair, by the side of, not facing, her plate of
bread, cheese and pickles; approached them; mopped up, so to speak, a
mouthful and a gulp; then receded into mere nodding propinquity. Her
supper was a series of moppings-up. Me she kept much in her eye, and to
my remarks ejaculated "Aw, my dear soul!" or "Did yu ever?" I said with
feeble wit, in order to grease the conversation, that stout and bitter,
being called _mother-in-law_, was just the thing for Mrs Pinn.

"Aw, my dear life!" she exclaimed, taking a mouthy sip. "What chake to
be sure!"

It was Mrs Widger who, with a glint of amusement in her eyes, came
tactfully to my rescue.

[Sidenote: _MY NIGHTCAP_]

About ten o'clock, Mrs Widger took down two glasses and the sugar
basin, and set the conical broad-bottomed kettle further over the fire.
Mrs Pinn glanced at the top shelf of the dresser where my whiskey
bottle stands. Her bright eyes kept on returning to that spot. I should
have liked to ask Mrs Pinn to take a glass, but knew I could not afford
to let it be noised abroad that 'there's a young gen'leman to Tony
Widger's very free with his whiskey.' I dared not make a precedent I
should have to break; the breaking of which would