'Come, lad!' said the ferryman. 'Let us go to the Lion. We will have a glass to your good fortune.'
Jack could not refuse. He shouldered his bundle and accompanied the elder man into the village of Seaton, and with him entered the public-house kept by Mrs. Warne.
But when there, he was unable to talk, his heart was troubled, his mind engaged. He was thinking of the girl Winefred and of her ill-humour, rather than of his new start in life.
Happily for him there were others in the house at their beer, and with them Dench fell into talk. Jack sipped at his glass, looking dreamily before him.
'This is a poor beginning,' said Dench, presently noticing how absent the lad was. 'It is not what the captain would have liked—ah! there was a man if you will. He'd have said, "You were not chipped off the old block, but whittled out of the soft wood of your mother." He would have had you take to a more stirring life and one connected with the salt water.'
'A man must take, in these times, whatsoever offers,' answered Jack. 'I have been sufficiently long out of work to take up any work with relish.'
'But you need not have been without a job,' said Dench, with a wink to his fellows at his table.
'I could get none that suited me.'
'Well! There is no more understanding the fancies of boys than the whimsies of girls. There is Winefred Marley, or as she is pleased to call herself, Holwood, gone off to be a fine lady at Bath. We shall hear next of her marrying some fine gentleman, and when he comes to learn who and what she is, there will be the deuce to pay. However, she has a tongue that can parry as well as lunge.'
Jack stood up.