“‘You’ll ’ave nothing of the sort, you bad man,’ she says, wiping her eyes and glaring at me.
“‘Juffrouw,’ I says, free and easy, ‘I’m just off ship and I’m ’ungry--so ’ungry I could fair eat you--and I never see a pretty maid crying but I kiss ’er tears away. I ain’t been drinking either. I ain’t a drinking man.’
“I was serious for all my glib talk, sir. I was that serious as I’d never been in my life before; and, between ourselves, sir, though I ’ate to admit it, I didn’t kiss no tears away that day. She wouldn’t ’ave it.
“Wot was she weeping for? She’d just lorst ’er sweetheart, sir, that was wot for! ’E was a sheep-faced Dutchman--I sawr ’im afterward, I did, and he ’adn’t a merit to ’im. She didn’t really love ’im, but she thort she did, and that’s where I come in a-asking for a kiss!
“‘Oom Jan,’ she yells to the back of the shop. ‘Come ’ere and throw out this drunken sailor-man.’
“Lucky for me ’er uncle didn’t ’ear ’er, so I leans across the counter and I says very serious, ‘Juffrouw, I love you. Tell me, wot’s the tears about?’”...
“I tell you, sir,” he interrupted his story to observe, “in dealing with women tell ’em the truth first pop. If you love ’em, tell ’em so. Lies is all right in dealing man to man, but with the wimmen, tell ’em the truth.
“So it wasn’t long till we was fair intimate. I ’ung ’round ’er shop for three days, I did, and then I thort as ’ow I might take a few liberties with ’er.
“‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing of that, George. I want to make you a good wife,’ she says.
“‘Wife,’ I says to myself. I was sitting in the potaties all right-o, with a quid a month and no ‘ome ner nothing. Wife! Wot ’ave I let myself in for?’ But she was that simple ’earted I couldn’t say no to ’er and I loved her fair to distraction.
“I went back to my ship, but I couldn’t stand it, so at last I gave it up and went to her and we was married in a church and set up ’ousekeeping in a barge!”
A sharp voice from the cabin cut short our colloquy. The skipper jumped as if shot. “Coming, coming,” he called in a very respectful voice, “coming, my dear!”
“It’s----” I left the useless question unfinished. I knew it was the Queen of Sheba, the heroine of the sweets-shop in Flushing, the Mrs. Noah of the barge.