While the sailor and the young girl were having their conversation in the garden, two people who were intensely interested in their movements were taking their breakfast in one of the back rooms of the plain, old-fashioned house.
One of them was a fat, testy man, with large and prominent watery gray eyes, who was irritably chipping the top from an egg, and varying this occupation by casting frequent and semi-displeased glances through the open window. Mr. Israel Danvers was master of this house, owner of the principal store in the village across the meadows, and husband of the woman with the large, cool, comfortable face, who sat opposite him pouring his coffee.
“I wonder what that Fordyce is up to now?” he muttered, with a whole volley of glances outside.
“I don’t know,” responded Mrs. Danvers, tranquilly, “but I imagine it’s something important. Otherwise he’d wait for lamplight.”
“What do you mean by important?”
“I mean marriage.”
Mr. Danvers fretfully scattered his egg-shell on the table-cloth. “Nina is too young to marry.”
“She is eighteen.”
“She is too young, I say. She is nothing but a butterfly.”
“She is certainly frivolous,” said Mrs. Danvers, with a judicial air.