“Ay, and then I’ll be serving our own rum, and you and Captain Fen de Witt will settle the price yourselves—— Oh, Hal! lad, that’ll be happiness.”
“Why, Anny, girl, ain’t you happy now? Gilbot’s been more than good to both of us. It isn’t every landlord who’d bring up a couple of orphans in his inn and look after them the way he has us.”
The girl pouted her full red lips.
“It isn’t as if we didn’t work for him,” she said.
“Oh, Anny!”—Hal’s honest blue eyes clouded for a moment—“you didn’t serve the liquor till you were fourteen, you know, and he even let me study a bit before I started to help.”
“Ay, may be, but your folk left some money to him, didn’t they?”
“Nay, lass. They died aboard Fen de Witt’s schooner, the Dark Blood, coming down from the North. You know that; I’ve told you so some twenty times.”
“Ay, you have, but I like to hear you praise Gilbot, Hal, your eyes shine so, and you seem almost angry with me—I like you angry, Hal.”
The boy laughed.
“Saucy minion! When we are married you will not wish me angry. Faith, lass, you would not make another Ben Farran of me—surely?”