“Yes, missie, and died there,” said Miss Potts sadly. “Every one of us but mother and me; that’s why I’ve never looked on it since. To me it is like a great, sly, deceitful monster, always sighing and moaning for somebody, or foaming and storming in rage. We came away, mother and me, after the last was drowned; we couldn’t bear it any longer.”
“Poor Miss Potts!” said little Priscilla, laying her hand on Miss Potts’s worn ones, moving so restlessly in her lap.
Mrs. Carlyon had gone away and left them together, and Miss Potts had dropped into a chair close to Priscilla’s sofa.
“You don’t think the sea will roar for Loveday, and swallow her up, do you?” asked Priscilla, in a very anxious voice.
“Oh no, my dear; Porthcallis is a very safe place!” said Miss Potts emphatically. “P’r’aps I shouldn’t have told you anything about—about my experience. But where we lived it was very wild and rocky, and my folk were all seafaring; ’twas their work to go to sea. Out of all my family that lies in the burying-ground, only two of them are men; all the rest of our men-folk lies at the bottom of the sea.”
“But you had sisters, hadn’t you, Miss Potts?”
“Yes, dear, two; but the sea had them as well. One of them, Annie—she was the youngest—was out shrimping by herself one day, when the tide caught her and carried her out. Hettie saw her, and ran into the sea to save her, but——”
“Yes?” whispered Priscilla softly, her eyes full of tears. “Couldn’t she reach her?”
“Yes, she reached her. Father, coming home that night from the fishing, found them clasped together, and brought them home,” said poor Miss Potts. “I never saw a smile on his face from that day till just a year later, when the sea claimed him too.”
“Oh, how dreadful! I shall never like the sea again,” said Priscilla, wiping away her tears. “I don’t wonder you came away. Did you come straight to Trelint?”