“I can't look at skies, and that—have seen too many of them. You young folk, go and chirp under the tree. What I want is a little rum and water.”
With these words the tanner went into his bower, where he kept a good store of materials in moss; and the plaited ivy of the narrow entrance shook with his voice, and steps, and the decision of his thoughts. For he wanted to see things come to a point, and his only way to do it was to get quite out of sight. Such fools the young people of the age were now!
While his thoughts were such, or scarcely any better, his partner in life came down the walk, with a heap of little things which she thought needful for the preservation of the tanner, and she waddled a little and turned her toes out, for she as well was roundish.
“Ah, you ought to have Sue. Where is Sue?” said Master Popplewell. “Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash.”
Mrs. Popplewell grumbled, but obeyed; for she saw that her lord had his reasons. So Mary and Robin were left outside, quite as if they were nothing to any but themselves. Mary was aware of all this manoeuvring, and it brought a little frown upon her pretty forehead, as if she were cast before the feet of Robin Lyth; but her gentleness prevailed, because they meant her well. Under the weeping-ash there was a little seat, and the beauty of it was that it would not hold two people. She sat down upon it, and became absorbed in the clouds that were busy with the sunset.
These were very beautiful, as they so often are in the broken weather of the autumn; but sailors would rather see fair sky, and Robin's fair heaven was in Mary's eyes. At these he gazed with a natural desire to learn what the symptoms of the weather were; but it seemed as if little could be made out there, because everything seemed so lofty: perhaps Mary had forgotten his existence.
Could any lad of wax put up with this, least of all a daring mariner? He resolved to run the cargo of his heart right in, at the risk of all breakers and drawn cutlasses; and to make a good beginning he came up and took her hand. The tanner in the bower gave approval with a cough, like Cupid with a sneeze; then he turned it to a snore.
“Mary, why do you carry on like this?” the smuggler inquired, in a very gentle voice. “I have done nothing to offend you, have I? That would be the last thing I would ever do.”
“Captain Lyth, you are always very good; you never should think such things of me. I am just looking at a particular cloud. And who ever said that you might call me 'Mary'?”
“Perhaps the particular cloud said so; but you must have been the cloud yourself, for you told me only yesterday.”