If in that time
she should list over towards ye ever so little, mind you take her.
You have more right to her than I. You chose her when my mind was
elsewhere, and you best deserve her; for I have never known you
forget one woman, while I've forgot a dozen. Take her then, if she
will come, and God bless both of ye.'
Another person besides John saw Bob go. That was Derriman, who was
standing by a bollard a little further up the quay. He did not
repress his satisfaction at the sight. John looked towards him with
an open gaze of contempt; for the cuffs administered to the yeoman
at the inn had not, so far as the trumpet-major was aware, produced
any desire to avenge that insult, John being, of course, quite
ignorant that Festus had erroneously retaliated upon Bob, in his
peculiar though scarcely soldierly way. Finding that he did not
even now approach him, John went on his way, and thought over his
intention of preserving intact the love between Anne and his
brother.
He was surprised when he next went to the mill to find how glad they
all were to see him. From the moment of Bob's return to the bosom
of the deep Anne had had no existence on land; people might have
looked at her human body and said she had flitted thence. The sea
and all that belonged to the sea was her daily thought and her
nightly dream. She had the whole two-and-thirty winds under her
eye, each passing gale that ushered in returning autumn being
mentally registered; and she acquired a precise knowledge of the
direction in which Portsmouth, Brest, Ferrol, Cadiz, and other such
likely places lay.
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