“It goes without the saying. And there was one among them whom you loved?” The brown face grew suddenly very tender as with the shadow of a memory. “Then for the sake of him save Joscelyn’s sweetheart for her.”
But still she shook her head, and for a minute Richard was in despair. Then he began all over again, adding the gold piece to his argument. Thus for half an hour the plea went on, and just as he felt that he had failed, she suddenly nodded her head decisively, that softened light again shining in her face.
“One of the boys shall bide at home, and you may go in his stead, since you are so set on it; but mind, you help with the boat, and I have the gold.”
“That and Joscelyn’s love shall be yours, you dear, bonny dame!” he cried rapturously, seizing her about the shoulders and kissing her heartily on either red cheek.
“Get out! Of all the lads I ever saw, you have the freest manners.” But the shove she gave him had in it no roughness. He had set her to thinking of her own youth and of a lad who had gone to sea one morning, kissing his hand to her, but had never come home again, though she had waited for him for many a day through shine of sun and wail of storm. Through all her life a woman’s first love is a touchstone to her sympathy, an open sesame to her tenderness; neither as maid, nor yet as wife, does she ever quite forget that first sweet spell upon her heart. Dame Grant scarcely saw the man beside her, but for sake of that other lad, whom nobody had been able to help far back in the years that were dead, she would save this other girl’s lover.
In an hour their preparations were made. From the loft of her hut the dame brought down a leather jerkin and a battered hat, and after her scissors had gone over Richard’s head, he was metamorphosed so that even she herself would scarcely have recognized him.
“You’d be a fine figure of a man if those wretches on the ship had not starved the shape out of you.”
“My mother always said that in the way of beauty Providence had done more for my legs than for my face,” Richard laughed.
“Well, the warden hath undone the job, for thy breeches hang like a scarecrow’s. Now up into the loft with you, and find some straw whereon to sleep. ’Tis close upon midnight, and we start with the sun.”