rily about the new
fishing-smack. Tris had taken Mr. Arundel into his confidence. He
wished to have his permission to make a careful selection and to
attend to all matters connected with its proper transfer. And though
that gentleman's own feelings did not lie upon the surface of his
nature or explain themselves in childlike secrets and surprises, he
could understand and almost envy the wealth of emotions and illusions
that demanded such primitive expressions.

So he permitted Tris to absent himself frequently for such a laudable
purpose. Indeed, Mr. Arundel had seen the death of John's boat, and
this point of interest enabled him to feel something of the pleasure
and importance which centred around the boat now building to take its
place. For Tris had found in a yard ten miles north just the very kind
of smack John had always longed for--a boat not built by mathematical
measurements, but a wonderful, weatherly, flattish smack; that with a
jump would burst through a sea any size you like, and keep right side
up when the waves were fit to make a mouthful of her.

She was building for the pilchard season and was to be ready for the
middle of June. And at length she was finished and waiting to be
brought to her own harbour. If she had been a living, loving human
creature, her advent could not have been more eagerly longed for. Yet
there had been a short period of coolness between Tris and Denas, for
Tris in some moment of enthusiasm had gone beyond the line Denas had
marked out for him. And then she had been cold and silent and Tris had
been miserable. Joan, also, had taken the young man rather scornfully
to task.

"Tris," she said, "you be as knowing about a woman as Peter Mullet
was, and he was hanged for a fool. Be you looking to sow and reap in
the same month?"

"Not as I know by, but--but----"

"But you be so blind in love you could not see a hole in a ladder or
tell the signs on a woman's face. Denas be 'fraid of her own self. Let
her be. Let her be. If you do say a word now about your love she will
run back and hide herself in an old love--that be a woman's way. See,
now! As the old love quails the new love will fetch up--but time given
for quailing, Tris, for all that. Denas had a sight of trouble, Tris;
she may well be feared to try matrimony again."

"I would try and make her happy. I would be a good husband."

"Husbands! husbands! Tris, they be like pilchards--the bad ones are
very bad and the best ones