“Why are you for ever plaguing me about the Spaniard? Why does everyone talk of him? I’m sick of hearing his name—if you’re jealous of him go to him, not to me.”
Hal shrugged his shoulders and said with irritating calmness:
“Then there is that for me to go to him about, eh?”
Anny raised her little clenched fists above her head and cried aloud:
“You make me mad, Hal Grame. Of course there isn’t,” and then, as she saw that he didn’t believe her, she went on, “Of course not, of course! Oh, Hal! if you were a man you’d do other things than worry a poor lass dead with your foolishness.”
Hal flushed.
“Ah, that’s like a wench!” he said. “What if I haven’t a golden jacobus to my name! I shouldn’t think you’d throw that at me if you loved me.”
Anny did not speak and he went on, “If I were a man—yes, that’s it, if I were a dirty, sneaking, knife-throwing Spaniard, with a fleet of rat-ridden cockle-boats and a crew of mangy dogs behind me, you’d be content—then I could do other things—bring you gauds and laced petticoats. Faugh! I’m glad I’ve seen you thus; I wouldn’t wed a cormorant and a shrew.”
His anger had carried him away with it, for like most Norsemen he had a strain of bitterness under his usually sunny, peaceful disposition.
Anny winced at his words.