“And there’d been an end of me, Polly, and nobody a bit the worse, eh?”
The last speaker seemed to fill his sharp, pale face full of tiny wrinkles, and reduced his eyes to mere slits, as he looked keenly at the big robust woman at his side. She was about fifty, but with her black hair as free from grey as that of a girl, her dark eyes bright, and her sun-tanned face ruddy with health, as she bent forward with a great fish-basket supported on her back by means of a broad leather strap passed over her print sun-bonnet and across her forehead.
“Nobody the worse, Mr Luke, sir?” cried the woman. “What a shame to talk like that! You aren’t no wife, nor no child, but there’s Miss Louise.”
“Louisa, woman, Louisa,” said the fisher sharply.
“Well, Louisa, sir. I only want to be right; but it was only yes’day as old Miss Vine, as stood by when I was selling her some hake, shook her finger at me and said I was to say Miss Louise.”
“Humph! Never mind what my sister says. Christened Louisa.—That ought to fetch ’em.”
“Yes, sir; that ought to fetch ’em,” said the woman in a sing-song way, as the elderly man gave the glistening bait at the end of his running line a deft swing and sent it far out into the bright sea. “I’ve seen the water boiling sometimes out there with the bass leaping and playing. What, haven’t you caught none, sir?”
“No, Polly, not one; so just be off about your business, and don’t worry me with your chatter.”
“Oh, I’m a-going, sir,” said the woman good-humouredly; “only I see you a-fishing, and said to myself, ‘maybe Mr Luke Vine’s ketched more than he wants, and he’d like to sell me some of ’em for my customers.’”
“And I haven’t seen a bass this morning, so be off.”