"They are beautiful, too. Remember, I shall have Joe's ship for you to-morrow."
He nodded without smiling, and turned away until a point of the gorse had hidden her from sight. Then he sat down, loaded his pipe, and reflected.
"'Joe's ship,'" he said to himself, "a happy title enough."
And meantime the girl had looked after him with wonder and some amusement in her eyes, had rubbed her chin reflectively—a habit caught from her father—and had then scampered off smiling to herself.
"What a funny gent," she thought, "never laughs nor nothin'. An' I judged he was a artist! But wonnerful kind, an' wonnerful queer, wi' it, sure 'nough."
CHAPTER THREE
THE TREGENZAS
Joan Tregenza lived in a white cottage already mentioned: that standing just beyond Newlyn upon a road above the sea. The cot was larger than it appeared from the road and extended backward into an orchard of plum and apple-trees. The kitchen which opened into this garden was stone-paved, cool, comfortable, sweet at all times with the scent of wood smoke, and frequently not innocent of varied fishy odors. But Newlyn folk suck in a smell of fish with their mothers' milk. 'Tis part of the atmosphere of home.
When Joan returned from her visit to Gorse Point, she found a hard-faced woman, thin of figure, with untidy hair, wrinkled brow and sharp features, engaged about a pile of washing in the garden at the kitchen-door. Mrs. Tregenza heard the girl arrive, and spoke without lifting her little gray eyes from the clothes. Her voice was hard and high and discontented, like that of one who has long bawled into a deaf man's ear and is weary of it.
"Drabbit you! Wheer you bin? Allus trapsing out when you'm wanted; allus caddlin' round doin' nothin' when you ban't. I s'pose you think breakfus' can be kep' on the table till dinner, washing-day or no?"