The old fisherman stood watching her for some time, more than once saying to himself, “I wish that I had gone, the trip would not have hurt me; but Michael is a careful lad, and, even if the weather does come on bad, he will not risk staying out longer than is prudent.”
Bad, indeed, there shortly appeared every probability of the weather becoming. Dark green seas came rolling in crested with foam, and breaking with increasing loudness of sound on the rocky shore; the wind whistled and howled louder and louder.
Uncle Reuben buttoned up his coat to the chin as he gazed seaward. At last his daughter came to call him in to tea.
“Mother says you will be making yourself worse, father, standing out in the cold and damp.”
He obeyed the summons; still he could not help every now and then getting up and going to the door to see what the weather was like; each time he came back with a less favourable report.
As it grew dark, in spite of his dame’s expostulations he again went out and proceeded to the point, where he was also joined by three or four men, who had come either to attend to the beacon which was kept burning on dark nights, or to look out for the fishing-boats which they expected would at once return in consequence of the bad weather which had now in earnest set in.
As soon as Michael had left his home, a young girl, the child of a neighbour who lived further up the harbour in the direction of the mill, came running to the cottage, saying that her mother was taken ill, and that as her father and brothers were away fishing, there was no one to stay with her while she went to call for the doctor.
Nelly at once offered to go and stay with the poor woman, and to do her best.
“No, I will go,” said Dame Lanreath; “maybe I shall be able to tell what is best to be done as well as the doctor himself. Do you run on, Nancy, and I will come and look after your mother.”
As the dame was not to be contradicted, Nelly continued the work in which she was engaged, and her grandmother set off with active steps towards her neighbour’s cottage.