“The young fool!”
“Drat this box, it be made up o’ corners.”
Jeffray, who had caught nothing but the man’s mutterings and their surly looks, went down the steps to help Bess from the coach. Her eyes were sparkling with the excitement of it all, and the color had come back to her cheeks. Captain George gave her a clumsy bow as she passed him on the footway, and winked at Gladden behind his master’s back.
Jeffray took Bess into the parlor, where tobacco smoke still hung like a sea-fog, dimming the air. He opened one of the lattices, as the landlord brought in wine and glasses on a tray, a cold chicken, fruit, a great white loaf of bread. He looked suspiciously at the gray sky as he laid the table, the sign-board creaking and groaning on its hinges, the wind whistling and sighing in the chimneys.
“Bad weather for summer, sir.”
Jeffray nodded, and poured out Bess a glass of wine.
“May I be wishing, sir, that the lady don’t mind a rough sea?”
Bess glanced at Richard, and smiled, without fear.
“I would rather go,” she said.
“The weather looks uncommon dirty.”