But all that trouble he would not have minded, especially after his enjoyment of the place, if it had only borne good fruit.

He had felt quite certain that it must do this, and that he would have to pay another visit to the Head, and eat another duck, and have a flirt with Widow Precious.
But up to the present time nothing had come of it, and so far as he could see he might just as well have spared himself that long rough ride.

Three months had passed, and that surely was enough for even Flamborough folk to do something, if they ever meant to do it.

It was plain that he had been misled for once, that what he suspected had not come to pass, and that he must seek elsewhere the light which had gleamed upon him vainly from the Danish town.

To this end he went through all his case again, while hope (being very hard to beat, as usual) kept on rambling over everything unsettled, with a very sage conviction that there must be something there, and doubly sure, because there was no sign of it.
Men at the time of life which he had reached, conducting their bodies with less suppleness of joint, and administering food to them with greater care, begin to have doubts about their intellect as well, whether it can work as briskly as it used to do.