"Up'ards o' forty!" says John, charmed alike with her sincerity and her well-preserved beauty. "Why, I snum, you might marry a man o' twenty-five any day, if you had a mind."
"Ah, Captain, but I have n't the mind. I want a man--that is, if I ever wenter to marry agin--who is older than myself,--say from ten to fifteen year older. I would n't be so wery particular." And then she says to John,--for a possibility crosses her mind,--"Does your family live hereabouts?"
John blushed up to his eyes. "Family!" says he. "I never was so fortinate as to hev one."
"No, miss." And then he says he never expects to hev one.
"Cause nobody 'd hev me, miss; and to say truth, I never thought on 't much till sense we 've been a-takin' this voyage"; and he glanced at her slyly, and touched the ends of her ribbon.
"And what could 'a' put it into your head now, Captain Chidlaw?"
"Can you ask me that in airnest?" says John, still holding the ribbons as for dear life. "Then I must tell you to just look into the glass, and you 'll see what."
"O Captain, you ought to be ashamed to plague a poor lone woman like me that way; it 's wery bad of you, wery, and I 've a great mind to box your ears!" and she put out her little hand to him in a sweetly menacing manner.
John seized the hand and kissed it, and then, frightened at himself, ran to the other end of the boat and looked hard at the clouds.
"O, come back! come back!" screamed the widow; "the boat 'll upset, with me at one end and you at the other!"
"Sure enough!" says John, and he went sheepishly back, and again seated himself by her side.
She gave him a little tap on the ear, and asked him if he would promise never to run away and frighten her so again.
John said he would promise her anything in the world that was in his power to grant; and he looked at her with such adoration that the woman overcame the coquette, or the coquette the woman,--which shall I say?--and she went as far from the "dangerous edge of things" as possible, and told him demurely that the only promise she exacted was, that he should listen to the long and techin' story of her life. It all came back upon her, and she felt as if she must tell it to somebody. "May be, though, you don't want to hear it?" says she.