Mistress Pullen took a deep breath.
“And to think I have lived with a liar fit for the burning all these years!” she exclaimed. “For it was only this very day that I saw Master Coot (and if ever there was a snivelling sucking-pig ’tis he)—with my very own eyes and he told me that the brig was that minute moored in the Pyfleet, and every man of her crew aboard. A’m ashamed of ye, Joseph, to lie before the children the way you do.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, well, my girl,” he said significantly, “as far as we’re concerned they ain’t on the Island, see?” And he rose to his feet and stepped across to the fireplace.
Mistress Pullen opened her mouth to reply, but at this moment a violent knocking at the door interrupted her.
Joe looked across at his wife.
“Whoever will it be?” he said.
“If you had any sense at all you’d go and see instead of standing like a sheep thunderstruck,” said the lady, getting up from her seat, her baby on her arm. Striding over to the door, she opened it wide and then stepped back in astonishment, letting a blast of cold wind and rain into the over-heated room.
“Well, come in, whatever you are,” she said at last to someone outside as she held the door wide open to let them pass. “If you’re not welcome ye can always go again.”
A strange bedraggled little figure stepped into the candle-lit room. He was about nine years old, scantily clothed in a pair of sail-cloth breeches so large for him that the waist was fastened about his neck with a coarse string, and the knee-latchets flapped loosely over his little bare muddy feet, which were torn and scratched with thorns, and blue with cold. Round his shoulders he hugged what appeared to be the remains of a woman’s kirtle, the ragged hem hanging down to his knees and little rivulets of water dripping off the frayed ends on to the bricks. His face was like his feet, blue and muddy, but two sparkling blue eyes and a shock of red hair gave a certain charm to an otherwise insignificant countenance.