When your great book comes out, we shall
have in perfect form all the pile of your discoveries, which you break
up into little bits too liberally. The Blonde on the Pig is like Beauty
and the Beast. If gentle Scuddy rescues her, it won't be by Homer, or
Horace, or even holy orders, but by hard tugs and stout seamanship."
"With the blessing of the Lord, it shall be done," said the Rector,
knocking his pipe out; "and I trust that Providence may see fit to have
it done very speedily; for I dread the effect which so many gallant
strangers, all working hard and apparently in peril, may produce upon
the females of this parish."
But the Admiral laughed, and said, "Pooh, pooh!" for he had faith in the
maids of Springhaven.
For these there was a fine time now in store--young men up and down
everywhere, people running in and out with some new news, before they
could get their hats on, the kettle to boil half a dozen times a day,
and almost as much to see as they could talk of. At every high-water
that came by daylight--and sometimes there were two of them--every maid
in the parish was bound to run to the top of a sand-hill high enough to
see over the neck of the Head, and there to be up among the rushes all
together, and repulse disdainfully the society of lads. These took the
matter in a very different light, and thought it quite a pity and a
piece of fickle-mindedness, that they might go the round of crab-pots,
or of inshore lug-lines, without anybody to watch them off, or come down
with a basket to meet them.
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