The door opened, and in darted a grey-headed man, with handsome but strongly marked features, laughing and shouting like a schoolboy broke loose. He cried out, “Ah! I've found y' out at last.” Mrs. Dodd glided to meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality; he shook them heartily. “The vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had only flitted from the quay to the subbubs; 'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. And how are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?”
“Sawmill! What is that?”
“It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?”
“Dear no! Have you forgotten?—David.”
“Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?”
Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect——
“Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round.”
“Yes, my good friend; and her mother's darling.”
“And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, I see.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd sadly, “looks are deceitful; she is under medical advice at this very——”