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"Oh, Mr. Oke Mr. Oke, whatever is to be done! The press has collared Sally Hancock and all her gang! Some they've kilt, and wounded others, and all they've a-bound and carried off and shipped at the Quay-door. Oh, Mr. Oke, our house is ruined for ever!" The men gazed at her with their mouths open.
In this square of moonlight were now framed the head and shoulders of a human being. The young man felt a slight chill run down his spine. He leant forward out of the window and challenged the apparition, bating his tone as all people bate it at that hour. "Who are you?" he demanded. There was no reply for a moment, though he felt sure his voice must have carried to the quay-door.
Outside the Battery Point the girl hauled down the sails and got out the sweeps; and together they pulled up under the still sleeping town to the minister's quay-door. He was clumsy at this work, but she instructed him in whispers, and they managed to reach the ladder as the clocks were striking five.
His boyhood had been spent in a sooty Lancashire town, and to him the green garden, the quay-door, the barque, and the stilly water, seemed to fall little short of Paradise. "I reckoned you'd like it," she said. "An' to be sure, 'tis a blessing you do." He turned his stare upon her for a moment. She was a benign-looking woman of about fifty, in a short-skirted grey gown and widow's cap.
As the boat dropped under this blue quay-door, its upper flap opened softly, and a voice as softly said "Thank you kindly, John. And how d'ye do this May morning?" "Charming," the man answered frankly. "Handsome weather 'tis, to be sure." He looked up and smiled at her, like a lover. "I needn't to ask how you be; for you'm looking sweet as blossom," he went on.
They walked back through the orchards in silence. At Miss Sarah's quay-door they parted, and John hoisted sail for his home around the corner of the coast. Has olim exuvias mihi perfidus ille reliquit, Pignora cara sui: quae nunc ego limine in ipso, Terra, tibi mando; debent haec pignora Daphnin Ducite ab urbe domum, mea, carmina, ducite Daphnin.
Mr Pinsent's office for he had no shop-front, and indeed his stock-in-trade was not of a quality to invite inspection looked out upon the Town Square; his back premises upon the harbour, across a patch of garden, terminated by a low wall and a blue-painted quay-door.
The girl was waiting for him, still in the centre of the grass-plat. "I'm glad you've come," she repeated, but this time there was something like constraint in her voice. As he pulled-to the door softly she moved, and led the way down to the water-side. From the quay-door a long ladder ran down to the water.
It was against his principles to work on a Saturday night. "Your wife seems very strong," observed Hester, with a shade of reproach in her voice. "Strong as a horse," he assented cheerfully. "I call it wonnerful after what she've a-gone through. 'Twouldn' surprise me, one o' these days, to hear she'd taken up a tub with the cheeld in it, and heaved cheeld and all over the quay-door.
As I did so, I glanced up involuntarily towards the skylight, as if I half expected to find a pair of eyes staring down on me. Yet the book contained nothing but these mere trivialities. I climbed on deck again, relocked the hatch, replaced the tarpaulins, jumped into the boat and rowed homewards. Though the tide favoured me, it was dark before I reached Mr. Dewy's quay-door.
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