“Stevey,” I says, “I was born and bred on this coast,” but Stevey Todd was that taken up with his points of argument to Madame Bill that he didn't have any interest in my beginnings, and I went off to find Flannagan.
“Flannagan,” I says, “I got a sentiment.”
“Sintimint, is it!” he says. “Come off! Ye salted codfish! If I ain't got tin to your one, I'm another,” he says.
It made me mad to hear him talk that way, and I set him down on the starboard anchor and I argued it. I told him of the little town of Greenough, and then I told him of Madge Pemberton, that afterwards was Madge McCulloch, and how the old shore village lay, its street and white houses and its church with the gilded cupola, till Flannagan got interested. And there we talked a long time.
“Why, ye are salted, Tom,” he says, “but I'm not just sayin' ye're canned. We ain't due in New London till Thursday, an' it's on me moind we'll exhibit a bit in this town of Greenough.”
That afternoon, then, we hauled into the harbour, by where the fishing boats lay, and moored the Annalee to the old stone pier. Flannagan saw the tent, platform, and benches put up, and in the early evening he went inland to the village and didn't come back for some hours.
It was a moonlight night, and the show people were still getting ready for the next day. I was at the deck-cabin window, smoking an evening pipe, looking at the tent that stood on the sandy piece of land beyond the pier. I could see the trees of the village, and the church spire against the sky, and I thought of the way I'd meant to come back to Greenough, when I left it to go “romping and roaming,” as Sadler had said, and how now I was come home with grey hairs.
There was the hill between Newport Street and the harbour, and far along to the west I could see where Pemberton's stood, and see what might be its lights.
Pretty soon I heard David, the trick dog, barking, and I looked out, and saw Stevey Todd and Madame Bill coming along in the wake of David, and I judged that Stevey Todd was meaning to put in an odd moment or two arguing, and that Madame Bill was going to be joyous about it. David appeared to be feeling tolerable cheerful, as if saying to himself, “They're going to do something now, sure.” They sat down by the window, and Madame Bill was speaking:
“Stevey Todd,” she says, “I think it would not be such advantage, not at all. Because it is not good to my looks that I become two hundred pounds like my Bill, and if now I have a husband who cook so delicious, so perfect, as you, and who make me laugh between meals without rest and without pity, as you, which gives the appetite enormous, so that I have gained five pounds since I weigh before, and by this am alarmed, disconsolate, helas! what do I do? Am I elephants in this show? But how? I observe you do not ask that I marry you, but you say, 'It is a good time to talk here or there, about this or that—eh? Well, perhaps about matrimony.' Haw! haw! ho! ho! But how so? If you do not say, 'Will you?' how can I say 'No'?”