A little above Penberth Cove, and near the Green, there is an ancient cottage in an orchard. In this dwelling lived an old dame called Joan Taskes, who kept a kind of public-house, as liquors and other goods were entrusted to her, by smugglers, for sale. One afternoon, about nineteen or twenty years after Willy's[112] death—when he and the I'ans were almost forgotten—An' Joan, whilst busy spinning flax with a treadle-turn heard a knock at her open door, and, thinking it was somebody come to buy liquor, or "honey-pins"—a sweet apple for which her orchard was noted—without rising she called out, "Come 'e in cheeld, and don't 'e stay knacking at the door." But An' Joan was rather startled when, on looking round, she saw two ladies standing near her. They were both tall. One appeared about fifty and the other near twenty years of age. Their dresses made her think they must be foreigners. The elder was clad in some kind of white woollen stuff, by whatever name one might call her garb: it had loose, hanging sleeves, and its ample folds were confined by a girdle to her waist. Over her head she wore a square of black serge; its ends hanging on her shoulders, and shading her face, gave it a pallid appearance, which was rendered somewhat ghastly by a white linen band across her forehead. The younger wore a silver-grey dress of more ordinary mode, and for head-dress a lace veil that covered, without concealing, her braided dark brown hair. An' Joan, rising, drew out her form and said, "Pray be seated, ladies, and excuse me, as I thought you might have been some neighbours' children knocking at the door." "We called," the elder lady replied, "to enquire if there be any small dwelling unoccupied in Penberth, or Treen, or in any place near." "Be pleased to sit, ladies, and leave me think a moment," said the dame; "but I havn't heard of any place that would be good enough for you, and the only one I know of, close at hand, is Chynance. Why it seems to me," she continued, "as if I had heard the sound of your voice, years agone, somewhere, but can't call 'e to mind." "Look at me well, Aunt Joan," the lady rejoined, "and tell me if you can think of anyone you ever saw like me." The dame having adjusted her barnacles, peered at the lady's face and at length said in tremulous tones, "You can't be a spirit to come here high by day! Yet now I look at 'e again there's the dark brown eyes, straight nose, small mouth, and pitted chin of our poor lost Beatie! You can't be she? But with that white band across your forehead one can't see a lock of your hair; her's was of the darkest chesnut colour; besides the black kerchief or scarf, over your head, shades your face." "If you saw my hair, now nearly as white as your own, you wouldn't know me by that," the lady answered. "But don't be frightened, dear An' Joan," continued she, in folding back her veil, "look again and you will see Beatrice I'an, and this dear girl is my daughter Mary." [113]