“No, deng my buttons if I will.” “Why not?” “‘Cause it’s true.” Lovibond waited again, and then said in another voice, “And is this the little girl you used to tell of out yonder on the coast--Nessy, Nelly, Nell, what was it?” Davy’s eyes began to fill, but his mouth remained firm. He cleared his throat noisily, shook the dust out of his pipe on to the heel of his boot, and said, “No--yes--no--Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s Nelly Kinvig, that’s sarten sure. But the juice of the woman’s sowl’s dried up.” “The little thing that used to know your rap at the kitchen window, and come tripping out like a bird chirping in the night, and go linking down the lane with you in the starlight?” Davy broke the shaft of his churchwarden into small lengths, and flung the pieces out at the open window and said, “I darn’t say no.” “The one that stuck to you like wax when her father gave you the great bounce out--eh?” Davy wriggled and spat, and then muttered, “You go bail.” “You have known her since you were children, haven’t you?” Davy’s hard face thawed suddenly, and he said, “Ay, since she wore petticoats up to her knees, and I was a boy in a jacket, and we played hop-skotch in the haggard, and double-my-duck agen the cowhouse gable. Aw dear, aw dear! The sweet little thing she was then any way. Yellow hair at her, and eyes like the sea, and a voice same as the throstle! Well, well, to think, to think! Playing in the gorse and the ling together, and the daisies and the buttercups--and then the curlews whistling and the river singing like music, and the bees ahumoning--aw, terr’ble sweet and nice. And me going barefoot, and her bare-legged, and divil a hat at the one of us--aw, deary me, deary me! Wasn’t much starch at her in them ould days, mate.” “Is there now, captain?” “Now? D’ye say _now_? My goodness! It’s always hemming and humming and a heise of the neck, and her head up like a Cochin-China, with a topknot, and ‘How d’ye do?’ and cetererar and cetererar. Aw, smooth as an ould threepenny bit--smooth astonishing. And partic’lar! My gough! You couldn’t call Tom to a cat afore her, but she’d be agate of you to make it Thomas.” Lovibond smiled behind his big mustache. “The rael ould Manx isn’t good enough for her now. Well, I wasn’t objecting, not me. She’s got the English tongue at her--that’s all right. Only I’ll stick to what I’m used of. Job’s patience went at last and so did mine, and I arn’t much of a Job neither.” “And what has made all this difference,” said Lovibond.