“I’m only a rough sea-faring man,” said Tom. “I don’t know that any one respects me very much.” He waited a moment, but Patty said nothing; then he went on again:
“For all that, I’d rather be a man of thirty at thirty, and not as dead to all things as though I was a man of eighty. Isaac Naylor is more like a man of eighty than he is like one of thirty. No one would take him to be only five years older than I am.”
“I don’t know any man that I respect as much as I do Isaac Naylor,” said Patty. “I don’t like to hear thee talk against him as thee does. He has never spoken ill of thee.”
“Thee need never be afraid of my saying anything more against him,” said Tom, bitterly; “I see that thee likes him more than I thought thee did. I might have known it too, from the way that he has been visiting thee during this last month or two.”
“Why shouldn’t he visit me, Thomas?”
“The Lord knows!”
She made no answer to this, and presently Tom spoke again.
“I’m going off to sea before long, Patty,” said he, for it seemed to him just then that the sea was a fit place for him to be. Patty made no answer to this; she was picking busily at the fringe of the scarf that hung about her shoulders.
“How soon is thee going, Thomas?” said she at last.
“Oh! I don’t know; in three or four weeks, I guess. It doesn’t matter, does it?”