‘Will it?’ said she, combing her golden hair with her sea-green comb.
‘Indeed it will, and must,’ he said; ‘for I love you with all my soul, and I want you to give me a lock of your golden hair to wear over my heart.’
‘I do not give locks of my hair to landlubbers!’ cried she, with another toss of her proud young head and a scornful curl of her bright red lips.
‘A landlubber forsooth!’ he said, with an angry flash in his bold black eyes. ‘Who are you to speak so scornfully of a man of the land? One would think you were a maid of the sea.’
‘I am,’ quoth she, twining the tress of her hair she had combed round her shell-pink arm.
‘No seamaid is half as beautiful as you,’ said Tristram Bird, incredulous of what the maid said. ‘But, maid of the sea or maid of the land, I love you, sweet, and I want to have you to wife.’
‘Want must be your master, sir,’ said she, with an angry flash in her sea-blue eyes.
‘Love is my master, sweet maid,’ he said. ‘You are my love, and you have mastered me.’
‘Have I?’ said she, with a little toss of her golden head.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘and now that I have told you you are my love, and I want you to marry me, you will give me a lock of your golden hair, won’t you, sweet?’