She had observed John's wrinkled face, and her confession was not without method, though she might have added five to the forty years, if she had chosen to be very accurate.
"Up'ards o' forty!" says John, charmed alike with her sincerity and her well-preserved beauty. "Why, I snum, you might marry a man o' twenty-five any day, if you had a mind."
"Ah, Captain, but I have n't the mind. I want a man—that is, if I ever wenter to marry agin—who is older than myself,—say from ten to fifteen year older. I would n't be so wery particular." And then she says to John,—for a possibility crosses her mind,—"Does your family live hereabouts?"
John blushed up to his eyes. "Family!" says he. "I never was so fortinate as to hev one."
"Not even a wife, to be sure?"
"No, miss." And then he says he never expects to hev one.
"Law, Captain, why? if I may wenter."
"Cause nobody 'd hev me, miss; and to say truth, I never thought on 't much till sense we 've been a-takin' this voyage"; and he glanced at her slyly, and touched the ends of her ribbon.
"And what could 'a' put it into your head now, Captain Chidlaw?"
"Can you ask me that in airnest?" says John, still holding the ribbons as for dear life. "Then I must tell you to just look into the glass, and you 'll see what."