relieved her pent-up feelings.

"Thank the Lard that chitter-faaced wummon edn' gwaine to the weddin' any
ways! Us knaws she's a dear good sawl 'nough; but what wi' her sour voice,
an' her sour way o' talkin', an' her sour 'pinions, she'm enough to set a
rat-trap's teeth on edge."




CHAPTER TEN

MOONLIGHT


That evening Thomasin had another spasm of face-ache and went to bed soon
after drinking tea. Michael was due at home about ten o'clock or earlier,
and Joan--having set out supper, made all ready, and ascertained that her
stepmother had gone to sleep--walked out to the pierhead, there to wait for
Mr. Tregenza and Tom. Under moonlight, the returning luggers crept
homeward, like inky silhouettes on a background of dull silver. Every
moment added to the forest of masts anchored at the moorings outside the
harbor; every minute another rowing-boat shot between the granite piers,
slid silently into the darkness under shore, leaving moonlit rings widening
out behind at each dip of the oars. Joan sat down under the lighthouse and
waited in the stillness for her father's boat. Yellow flashes, like
fireflies, twinkled along through Newlyn, and above them the moon brought
out square patches of silver-bright roof seen through a blue night. Now and
then a bell rang in the harbor, and lights leaped here and there, mingling
red snakes and streamers of fire with the white moonbeams where they lay on