Page:The Delectable Duchy.djvu/269

 jetties and rented this room for sixpence a week. In these days he and Naomi rarely spoke to each other beyond exchanging a "Good-morning" when they met on the stairway, nor did he show any friendliness beyond tapping at her mother's door and inquiring about her once a day whenever she happened to be down with the fever. I have made researches and find that the rest of the house was tenanted at that time by a working block-maker, with his wife and four children; a widow and her son just returned from sea with an injured spine; a young couple without children. But these do not come into the tale.

Now the history of Naomi was this. She was married at three-and-twenty to Abe Bricknell, a young sailor of the port, and as steady as a woman could wish. In the third year of their married life, and a week after obtaining his certificate, he sailed out of Troy as mate of a fruit-ship, a barque, that never came back, nor was sighted again after passing the Lizard lights.

Naomi--a tall up-standing woman with deep, gentle eyes, like a cow's, and a firm mouth that seldom spoke--took her affliction oddly. She neither wailed nor put on mourning. She