“Coming for the mistress, are you, Capt'n?”
“I'm a sort of a grass-widow, ma'am. What's your eggs to-day, Mistress Cowley?”
“Sixteen this morning, sir, and right ones too. They were telling me you've been losing her.”
“Give me a shilling's worth, then. Any news over your side, Mag?”
“Two—four—eight—sixteen—it's every appearance we'll be getting a early harvest, Capt'n.”
“Is it yourself, Liza? And how's your butter to-day?”
“Bad to bate to-day, sir, and only thirteen pence ha'penny. Is the lil one longing for the mistress, Capt'n?”
“I'll take a couple of pounds, then. What for longing at all when it's going bringing up by hand it is? Put it in a cabbage leaf, Liza.”
Thus, with his basket on his arm and his pipe in his mouth, Pete passed from stall to stall, chatting, laughing, bargaining, buying, shouting his salutations over the general hum and hubbub, as he ploughed his way through the crowd, but listening intently watching eagerly, casting out grapples to catch the anchor he had lost, and feeling all the time that if any eye showed sign of knowledge, if any one began with “Capt'n, I can tell you where she is,” he must leap on the man like a tiger, and strangle the revelation in his throat.
Next day, Sunday, his friends from Sulby came to quiz and to question. He was lounging in his shirt-sleeves on a deck-chair in his ship's cabin, smoking a long pipe, and pretending to be at ease and at peace with all the world.