“Oh, of course, certainly,” said Jenny. “After he had listened a moment he went on, and I lost sight of him. Presently I went on, too, and walked across the Head until I came within sight of Port Soderick. Then I sat down by a great bowlder. So quiet up there, Nelly; not a sound except the squeal of the sea birds, the boo-oo of the big waves outside, and the plash-ash of the little ones on the beach below. All at once I heard a sigh. At that I looked to the other side of the bowlder, and there was my friend of the monkey jacket. I was going to rise, but he rose instead, and begged me not to trouble. Then I was vexed with myself, and said I hoped he wouldn’t disturb himself on my account.”
“You never said that, Jenny Crow?”
“Why not, my dear? You wouldn’t have had me less courteous than he was. So he stood and talked. You never heard such a voice, Nelly. Deep as a bell, and his Manx tongue was like music. Talk of the Irish brogue! There’s no brogue in the world like the Manx, is there now, not if the right man is speaking it.”
“So he was a Manxman,” said Mrs. Quiggin, with a far-away look through the open window.
“Didn’t I say so before? But he has quite saddened me. I’m sure there’s trouble hanging over him. ‘I’ve been sailing foreign, ma’am,’ said he, ‘and I don’t know nothing—‘.”
“Oh, then he wasn’t a gentleman?” said Mrs. Quiggin.
Jenny fired up sharply. “Depends on what you call a gentleman, my dear. Now, any man is a gentleman to me who can afford to dispense with the first two syllables of the name.”
Mrs. Quiggin looked down at her feet.
“I only meant,” she said meekly, “that your friend hasn’t as much education—.”
“Then, perhaps, he has more brains,” said Jenny. “That’s the way they’re sometimes divided, you know, and education isn’t everything.”