"And if eyes do look two ways," retorted the voice out of the unseen, "'tis only with trying to keep them on the antics of both Jan Pettigrew's legs at once; for your knees do so knock together like Spanish castanets, and your legs so jimble-jamble in their sockets, that 'tis as good as a puppet-with-strings dancing at the fair just to watch 'em!"
Jan looked still more apologetically at Scarlett.
"I am black ashamed," he said; "but, after all, she means no harm by it. She has never had any one to teach her religion or good manners, but has run wild here on Branksea among the goats and the ignorant sailormen."
"I hear thee, Wise Jan," cried the voice again; "tell no lying tales on your betters, or I in my turn will tell the tale of how Wise Jan went to Portsmouth—how the watch bade him go in and bathe, because that the lukewarm town's-water was good for warts. And when he had gone in, glad at heart to hear the marvel, being exceedingly warty, the watch stole his clothes, and then put him a week in Bridewell for walking of the streets without them in sight of the admiral's mother-in-law!"
"'Tis a lie!" shouted Jan, looking up from the boat, out of which he had carefully extracted all the various belongings he had brought with him; "a great and manifest lie it is! It was, as all men know, for fighting with six sailormen of the fleet that I was shut up in Bridewell."
"Wise Jan, Wise Jan, think upon what parson says concerning the day of judgment!" replied the voice, reproachfully. "For if thus you deny your true doings and confess them not, you will set all the little devils down below to the carrying of firewood to be ready against the day of your hanging."
Wise Jan did not deign to reply. He resigned the unequal wordy fray, and taking a back-load of stuff on his shoulders, he led the way up the neatly gravelled path, which wound from the little wooden landing-stage into the green and arching woods.
As Scarlett and Wat followed after and looked about them with much interest, a tall maid, clad in a blue skirt and figured blouse, and with her short tangles of hair blowing loose about her ears, dropped suddenly and lightly as a brown squirrel upon the path before them. Whereat Wat and Scarlett stopped as sharply as if a gun had been loosed off at them; for the girl had handed herself unceremoniously down from among the leaves, and there she stood right in their path, as little disconcerted as if that were the customary method of receiving strangers upon the Isle of Branksea.
"I bid you welcome, gentlemen," she said, bowing to them like a courteous boy of the court. Indeed, her kirtle was not much longer than many a boy's Sunday coat, and her hair, cropped short and very curly, had a boy's cap set carelessly upon the back of it.
Scarlett stared vaguely at the pleasant apparition.