"This here's no fit place
for women: and a man has his feelin's. I'm astonished at you,
Sarah--I reely am. The wife of a respectable tradesman!" But he
couldn't look her straight in the face.
"Why, what's wrong with the company?" she asks, looking around.
"Old, young, and middle-aged, I seem to know them all for Saltash
men: faults, too, they have to my knowledge: but it passes me what I
need to be afeared of. And only a minute since you was singing that
your happiness wouldn't be completed until that a helpmate you'd
found. Well, you've found her: so sing ahead and be happy."
"I will not," says he, still stubborn.
"Oh, yes you will, my little man," says she in a queer voice, which
made him look up and sink his eyes again.
"Well," says he, making the best of it, "to please the missus,
naybours, we'll sing the whole randigal through. And after that,
Sarah"--here he pretended to look at her like one in command--
"you'll walk home with me straight."
"You may lay to that," Sal promised him: and so, but in no very firm
voice, he pitched to the song again:
With transport he gazed upon her,
His happiness then was complate;
And he blessed the celestial donor
That on him bestowed such a mate--
"I reckon, friends, we'll leave out the chorus!"
They wouldn't hear of this, but ri-tooralled away with a will, Sal
watching them the while from the doorway with her eyebrows drawn
down, like one lost in thought.
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