Chance brought them face to face with two persons more vital to the
narrative than themselves, and, pausing to chronicle the event of the
meeting, we may leave the artists and follow those whom they encountered.
Gray Michael kept ashore on Sundays, and today, having come off the sea at
dawn, was not again putting forth until next morning. He had attended
meeting with his wife, his daughter and his son; he had dined also, and was
now walking over to Mousehole that he might bring some religious comfort to
a sorely stricken Luke Gospeler--a young sheep but lately won to the fold
and who now lay at the point of death. Joan accompanied him, and upon the
way they met John Barron and his companion. The girl blushed hotly and then
chilled with a great disappointment, for Barron's eyes were on the sea; he
was talking as he passed by, and he apparently saw neither her nor her
Sunday gown; which circumstance was a sorrow to Joan. But in reality Barron
missed nothing. He had shivered at her green dress and poor finery long
before she reached him. Her garb ruffled his senses and left him wounded.
"There goes your beauty," laughed Brady; "how would you like to paint her
in that frock with those sinful blue flowers in her hat?"
"Nature must weep to see the bizarre carnival these people enjoy on the
Seventh Day," answered the other. "Their duns and drabs, their russets and
tawny tones of red and orange, are of their environment, the proper skins
for their bodies; but to think of that girl brightening the eyes of a
hundred louts by virtue of those fine feathers! Dream of her in the Stone
Age, clad in a petticoat torn from a wolf, with her straw-colored hair to
her waist and a necklace of shells or wild beasts' teeth between her
breasts! And the man--her father, I suppose--what a picture his cursed
broadcloth and soft black hat make of him--like the head of a patriarch
stuck on a tailor's dummy.
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