From this underwood towered aloft the masts of
a coasting schooner, discharging its load of coal at the little
quay. Other boats lay drawn up on the beach in front of the Seaton,
and beyond it on the other side of the burn. Men and women were
busy with the brown nets, laying them out on the short grass of
the shore, mending them with netting needles like small shuttles,
carrying huge burdens of them on their shoulders in the hot sunlight;
others were mending, calking, or tarring their boats, and looking
to their various fittings. All was preparation for the new venture
in their own waters, and everything went merrily and hopefully.
Wives who had not accompanied their husbands now had them home
again, and their anxieties would henceforth endure but for a night
--joy would come with the red sails in the morning, lovers were
once more together, the one great dread broken into a hundred
little questioning fears; mothers had their sons again, to watch
with loving eyes as they swung their slow limbs at their labour, or
in the evenings sauntered about, hands in pockets, pipe in mouth,
and blue bonnet cast carelessly on the head: it was almost a single
family, bound together by a network of intermarriages, so intricate
as to render it impossible for any one who did not belong to the
community to follow the threads or read the design of the social
tracery.
And while the Seaton swarmed with "the goings on of life," the town
of Portlossie lay above it still as a country hamlet, with more
odours than people about: of people it was seldom indeed that three
were to be spied at once in the wide street, while of odours you
would always encounter a smell of leather from the saddler's shop,
and a mingled message of bacon and cheese from the very general
dealer's--in whose window hung what seemed three hams, and only
he who looked twice would discover that the middle object was
no ham, but a violin--while at every corner lurked a scent of
gillyflowers and southernwood.
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