Well, yes, Mrs. Tomlett thought it might be in both. His side also had got grazed. Her full opinion was, if she might venture to express it, that he had done it a climbing up into his boat. One blessed thing was--no bones was broke.
Miss Thornycroft laughed, and thought she might as well leave her to the peeling of the potatoes, the interruption to which essential duty had possibly driven her senses away.
"At any rate, whatever the hurt, I hope he will soon be about again," she kindly said, as she went out.
"Which he is a'most that a'ready," responded Mrs. Tomlett, standing on the threshold to curtsey to her guest.
No sooner was the door shut than Tomlett, a short, strong, dark man, with a seal-skin cap on, and his right arm bandaged up, came limping out of an inner room. The first thing he did was to glare at his wife; the second, to bring his left hand in loud contact with the small round table so effectually that the potatoes went flying off it.
"Now what do you think of yourself for a decent woman?"
Mrs. Tomlett sat down on a chair and began to cry. "It took to me, Ben, it did--it took to me awful," she said, deprecatingly, in the midst of her tears; "I never knowed as news of the hurt had got abroad."
"Do you suppose there ever was such a born fool afore as you?" again demanded Mr. Tomlett, in a slow, subdued, ironical, fearfully telling tone.
"When she come straight in with the query--what was Tomlett's hurt and how were it done?--my poor body set on a twittering, and my head went clean out o' me," pleaded Mrs. Tomlett.
"A pity but it had gone clean off ye," growled the strong-minded husband; "'tain't o' no good on."