Sue followed and stood in front of him.
Anny sat in her usual place at the window. She was sewing the buttons on an old coat of Gilbot’s, and several times she pricked her fingers, and then hastily dashed the back of her hand across her eyes, but otherwise she was very still and no one else in the room noticed her.
Hal went to draw a noggin of rum for French, and while he was away, the door opened, and Blueneck and Habakkuk Coot came in.
French, who had just formed a complete sentence to open conversation with Sue, scowled at the intruders, turned his back on the astonished girl, and stared into the fire. Perhaps it was the wisest thing he could have done, for Sue, as she bustled off to attend to the two sailors, began to think about him, a thing she had not done seriously since that evening when Black’erchief Dick first came to the Ship.
It was strange, she thought. Usually Big French seemed so pleased to see her, so ready to laugh with her, so childishly shy when she spoke directly to him, and she found herself thinking with pleasure of that evening when Gilbot had interrupted him in a most important question. She laughed to herself. Ah! that was before the advent of the Spaniard. Ah! the Spaniard! she sighed, and then flushed hotly at her own thoughts. What was the Spaniard to her? A man who was not even interested in her. She tossed her head, but all the same she sighed again before she put the tankards down before the two shipmates of the Coldlight, and returned once more to the young giant at the fireside.
“Master French,” she said, planting herself before him, “would you get me a thing or two at the market?”
French beamed at her.
“Anything,” he said jerkily, as though the word had been released from captivity, “or everything,” he added suddenly and earnestly.
Sue did not understand him and she looked down in surprise.
“Everything?” she repeated.