“Marry?” Sue laughed and Anny flushed.
“Methinks,” she went on, her voice becoming colder at every word, “that not to me so much as to thee, Mistress Sue, should such talk be addressed. Is your heart so free from thoughts of this same Dick that you can hold him up to me as dangerous? What was it made thee lose thy taste for Master French’s talk so suddenly? Oh! truth! you make me sick to see you take me for so senseless a wench that you think I do not see your cleverness. Mistress, beware of jealousy.”
Sue gasped. She had never considered the possibility of her words being taken in this way, and she could think of no adequate reply at that moment save a reproachful, “Anny!”
There was silence for a moment or two and then Anny spoke again over her shoulder.
“Rest assured,” she said, “’tis not thoughts of thy pesky little cheap-jack that keeps me awake o’ nights. There be many here better than he, and one amongst them whom I love.”
Then she buried her head under the blankets and did not speak again, in spite of Sue’s protestations of dislike for Dick, and the elder girl, getting tired of talking to seemingly deaf ears, lay down also and beguiled herself to sleep with thoughts of her own lover.
The next day broke fine and fresh after the heavy rainfall of the preceding three weeks, but Sue went about her work with a certain nervous fidgetiness which irritated Anny and sent her out over the fields with Hal.
Several times when they were out Sue went up to her room and there peered into the cracked mirror, putting a curl back here, another forward there, smoothing down her eyelashes with a moistened thumb and forefinger, and biting her lips till the red blood suffused them glowingly. More often did she go to the window, however, and stand there for minutes on end, staring out into the new begreened landscape, where the young leaves danced like lambkins in the cool, strong sea breeze, the sun on their wet surfaces lending them some of the splendour of jewels.
Sue had made up her mind. Nobody came to the Ship all the morning, and by three o’clock she was in no pleasant humour, so old Gilbot found when he asked her to sing for him, for she was up and off in a moment with the sharp remark, “that there was more to do in the world than sing and get deep in liquor.”
Gilbot was amazed; his little blue eyes stared surprisedly in front of him, and he absent-mindedly put his rumkin upside down on the stove and it was some minutes before he discovered that the kitchen was reeking with burnt rum dregs.