It was ten o’clock before Ortho took his way homewards. He had not done so badly, he thought. Mary Penaluna might pretend to take no interest in his travels, but he had managed to hold Simeon’s ears fast enough. The grim farmer had laughed till the tears started at Ortho’s descriptions of the antics of the negro soldiers after the looting at Figvig and the equatorial mummery on board the Indiaman. Mary Penaluna might pretend not to be interested, but he knew better. Once or twice, watching her out of the tail of his eye, he had seen her lips twitch and part. He could tell a good story, and knew it. In soldier camps and on shipboard he had always held his sophisticated audiences at his tongue’s tip; it would be surprising if he could not charm a simple farm girl. More than ever he admired her—the soft glow on her brown hair as she sat sewing, her broad, efficient hands, the bountiful curves of her. And ecod! in what excellent order she kept the house! That was the sort of wife for a farmer. And he was a farmer now. Why, yes, certainly. He would start work the very next day. This wandering was all very well while one was young, but he was getting on for thirty and holed all over with wounds, five to be precise. He’d marry that girl, settle down and prosper. As he walked home he planned it all out. His mother should stop at Bosula of course, but she’d have to understand that Mary was mistress. Not that that would disturb Teresa to any extent; she detested housekeeping and would be glad to have it off her hands. Then there was Eli, good old brother, best farmer in the duchy. Eli was welcome to stop too and share all profits. Ortho hoped that he would stop, but he had noticed that Eli had been very silent and strange since his home-coming and was not sure of him—might be wanting to marry as well and branch out for himself. Tregors had gone, but there was over four hundred pounds of that smuggling money remaining, and if Eli wanted to set up for himself he should have every penny of it to start him, every blessed penny—it was not more than his due, dear old lad. As soon as Mary accepted him—and he didn’t expect her to take more than a week in making up her mind—he’d hand the money over to Eli with his blessing. Before he reached home that night he had settled everybody’s affairs to his own satisfaction and their advantage. Ortho was in a generous mood, being hotly in love again. CHAPTER XXVII