‘Do you hear that echo of thunder in the cliff I told you about?’ said my husband.
I listened and said ‘Yes.’
‘It is like a distant firing of guns,’ said Mary.
‘You have some good boats down there dancing beside the pier,’ said my husband to the boatman.
‘Ay,’ answered the boatman, ‘you’ll need to sail a long way round the coast to find better boats than them.’
‘That is a pretty boat, Mary,’ said I, pointing to one with two masts—a tall mast in the fore-part and a short mast at the stern; she was painted green and red, and she was very clean and white inside, and she appeared in my eyes the prettiest of all the boats as she dived and tumbled and leaped buoyantly and not without grace upon the sharp edges of the broken water.
‘That’s my boat, lady,’ said the sailor.
‘What is her name?’ inquired Mary.
‘The Mary Hann, he answered. ‘I named her after my wife. My wife is gone dead. I’ve got no wife now but she,’ and he pointed with his thumb backwards at his boat, ‘and she’s but a poor wife too. She airns little enough for me. T’other kept the home together with taking in washing, but nobody comes to Piertown now. Folks want what’s called attractions. But the Local Board’ll do nothen except buy land as belongs to the men who forms the Local Board, and the likes of me has to pay for that there land, and when it’s bought fower five times as much as it’s worth, it’s left waste. Lord, the jobbery! Are you making any stay here, sir?’
‘Yes,’ answered my husband, ‘we are here for a month.’