I was struck then, as I had been before, by a certain air of deference which the husband assumed toward the wife. It did not surprise me, for her bearing and manner, as well as such of her actions as I had seen, stamped her as singularly self-reliant and independent for a woman; and to these qualities, as much as to the rather dreamy character of the husband, I was content to set down the peculiarity. I should add that a rare and pretty tenderness constantly displayed on her part toward him robbed it of any semblance of unseemliness.
They saw that the exertion of talking exhausted me, and so, with an encouraging nod, left me to myself. A few minutes later a couple of English sailors, belonging to the Framlingham, came up, and with gentle strength transported me, under Mistress Anne's directions, to a queer-looking wide-beamed boat which lay almost alongside. She was more like a huge Thames barge than anything else, for she drew little water, but had a great expanse of sail when all was set. There was a large deck-house, gay with paint and as clean as it could be; and in a compartment at one end of this--which seemed to be assigned to our party--I was soon comfortably settled.
Exhausted as I was by the excitement of sitting up and being moved, I knew little of what passed about me for the next two days, and remember less. I slept and ate, and sometimes awoke to wonder where I was. But the meals and the vague attempts at thought made scarcely more impression on my mind than the sleep. Yet all the while I was gaining strength rapidly, my youth and health standing me in good stead. The wound in my head, which had caused great loss of blood, healed all one way, as we say in Warwickshire; and about noon, on the second day after leaving Dort, I was well enough to reach the deck unassisted, and sit in the sunshine on a pile of rugs which Mistress Anne, my constant nurse, had laid for me in a corner sheltered from the wind.
* * * * *
Fortunately the weather was mild and warm, and the sunshine fell brightly on the wide river and the wider plain of pasture which stretched away on either side of the horizon, dotted, here and there only, by a windmill, a farmhouse, the steeple of a church, the brown sails of a barge, or at most broken by a low dike or a line of sand-dunes. All was open, free; all was largeness, space, and distance. I gazed astonished.
The husband and wife, who were pacing the deck forward, came to me. He noticed the wondering looks I cast round. "This is new to you?" he said smiling.
"Quite--quite new," I answered. "I never imagined anything so flat, and yet in its way so beautiful."
"You do not know Lincolnshire?"
"No."
"Ah, that is my native county," he answered. "It is much like this. But you are better, and you can talk again. Now I and my wife have been discussing whether we shall tell you more about ourselves. And since there is no time like the present I may say that we have decided to trust you."