’Twas strange how all my bashfulness had vanished, not that usually I am such a fool with the women. So we conversed of many things until of a sudden I noted that the sun was going down behind the hills. I jumped up from the bench where we had been sitting.
“I quite forgot it,” I exclaimed.
“What?” asked Lucille.
“My dinner,” I answered, aware of a gone and lonesome feeling below my belt. “I was to go back to the tavern for it, but, I--I--came this way, and----”
“You missed your dinner talking to me,” finished Lucille solemnly. “Welladay, Captain, I am indeed flattered. But there, you shall not say that I am a hard commander. Come in and sup with me. ’Tis true, I cannot make amends for the companionship to be found at the inn, nor can I boast of such cookery as can Mistress Willis. Yet if you will but deign to grace my humble board ’twill be of my best store that I will set before you,” and she dropped a bow to me that had much of sauciness in it, and stood waiting for my answer.
I protested that I could not trouble her, that I had no appetite, that I must be at Salem inn to meet any recruits that might come this first day.
“Very well then, Captain,” she said, with a stately bend of her head. “Since you prefer the inn to my poor roof so be it.”
’Twas then that I hastened to make a different meaning to my words, and I pleaded that I might even have a crust in her dooryard. That she would but suffer me to sit on the threshold, and see her eat. (My, but how the hunger gripped me then). Verily I was afraid she would take me at my last words. But at length with a merry laugh, she bade me enter the house, and, while I sat and watched the lengthening shadows, Lucille and the woman servant set the meal.
I forget what it was that I ate. Certain I am that I talked and looked at Lucile, more than I used my knife and fork, for I remember that when I reached the inn later I had to rout up Willis[Willis], and dine again on cold meat. But, though the memory of the meal passes, I can see Lucille yet, as she sat opposite me then. And of the topics we conversed on, though they be in the dim, shadowy past, yet the sound of her voice is in my ears still.
That night when I went on my way to the tavern, I found myself humming a love song I had heard in England years ago.