"Oh, nothing to signify, uncle."
"'Twas sommat 'bout you and Adam, warn't it?" he continued with a puzzled air: "'tis all in my head here, though I can't zackly call it to mind. That's the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm blessed if I can tell 'ee."
"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.
"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or 'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."
Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in, for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.
"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."
But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.
"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a look full of inquiry and meaning.
Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task, and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered to a father by a son save when they two stood quite alone; and Adam, after meeting a second look from Eve, shook his head, feeling satisfied that she would know that only some grave requirement deterred him from immediately announcing the happiness which henceforth was to crown his life. But our intuition, at the best, is somewhat narrow, and where the heart is most concerned most faulty: therefore Eve, and Adam too, felt each disappointed in the other's want of acquiescence, and inclined to be critical on the lack of mutual sympathy.
Suddenly the door opened and in walked Jerrem, smiling and apparently more radiant than usual under the knowledge that he was more than usually an offender. Joan, who had her own reasons for being very considerably put out with him, was not disposed to receive him very graciously; Adam vouchsafed him no notice whatever; Uncle Zebedee, oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish impatience she feared she had been betrayed into on the previous morning.