"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without she."
This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air of piteous perplexity—nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness of man without woman—proved too much for our risible nerves. We maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell into shouts of laughter—the innocent laughter of happy-minded people over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.
"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."
Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.
Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.
"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll try it."
There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too savoury descent—the cove being used as a fish cellar—we found ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine, with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt we had not come here for nothing.
The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.
"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say, of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings—they seemed more like the latter now—to bathe on Kennack Sands.