He stopped, surprised at his own forwardness, and he was more surprised when his father, looking down at him gravely, said without chiding: "Our farm? Ay, Miles, so soon as there is work to do on shore you shall come with me and bear a hand."
CHAPTER IV
HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER
"TO-MORROW I am going ashore." Thus Miles Rigdale proclaimed, from his perch on the bunk in his father's cabin, to all who might choose to hear.
"'Tis the forty and third time you've said that in the last sennight," Ned Lister answered dryly. He was lounging in the cabin door, shirt-sleeved and shivering, while Goodwife Rigdale repaired his doublet; Mistress Hopkins, to whom the task ordinarily fell, lay ill, and her stepdaughter, Constance, was so busied that, to relieve her, Alice Rigdale had taken the young man and his mending off her hands.
"Why do you not put on your cloak, if you be cold, Ned Lister?" Dolly spoke up.
"Because 'tis too much labor to fetch it, Puss," Ned answered, whereat Miles laughed, and the Goodwife's brows puckered; another might have said it was because the sewing gave her trouble, but Miles, who felt uncomfortably that his mother disapproved of Ned as a scatter-brained, reckless fellow, guessed that she had not liked that last speech.
He was sure of his guess when she hastened to change the subject: "Does it still rain upon deck, Edward?"