"Well, souls, we was a bit tiddlywinky last Michaelmas, when the _Young Susannah_ came ashore, that I must own. Folks blamed the Pa'son for preachin' agen it the Sunday after. 'A disreppitable scene,' says he, ''specially seein' you had nowt to be thankful for but a cargo o' sugar that the sea melted afore you could get it.' (Lift the pore chap aisy, Sim.) By crum! Sim, I mind your huggin' a staved rum cask, and kissin' it, an' cryin', 'Aw, Ben--dear Ben!' an' 'After all these years!' fancyin' 'twas your twin brother come back, that was killed aboard the _Agamemny_--" "Well, well--prettily overtook I must ha' been. (Stiddy, there, Crowder, wi' the legs of en.) But to-day I'll be mild, as 'tis Chris'mas." "Iss, iss; be very mild, my sons, as 'tis so holy a day." They tramped on, bending their heads at queer angles against the weather, that erased their outlines in a bluish mist, through which they loomed for a while at intervals, until they passed out of sight. Ruby, meanwhile, had hurried on, her cloak flapping loudly as it grew heavier with moisture, and the water in her shoes squishing at every step. At first she took the road leading down-hill to Ruan Cove, but turned to the right after a few yards, and ran up the muddy lane that was the one approach to Sheba, her father's farm. The house, a square, two-storeyed building of greystone, roofed with heavy slates, was guarded in front by a small courtlage, the wall of which blocked all view from the lower rooms. From the narrow mullioned windows on the upper floor, however, one could look over it upon the duck-pond across the road, and down across two grass meadows to the cove. A white gate opened on the courtlage, and the path from this to the front door was marked out by slabs of blue slate, accurately laid in line. Ruby, in her present bedraggled state, avoided the front entrance, and followed the wall round the house to the town-place, stopping on her way to look in at the kitchen window. "Mary Jane, if you call that a roast goose, I cull it a burning shame!" Mary Jane, peeling potatoes with her back to the window, and tossing them one by one into a bucket of water, gave a jump, and cut her finger, dropping forthwith a half-peeled magnum bonum, which struck the bucket's edge and slid away across the slate flooring under the table. "Awgh--awgh!" she burst out, catching up her apron and clutching it round the cut. "Look what you've done, Miss Ruby! an' me miles away, thinkin' o' shipwrecks an' dead swollen men." "Look at the Chris'mas dinner, you mazed creature!"