On deck, I made her a soft place with my cloak; and the weather being singularly fine for that season, with bright frosty days and nights, a steady, gentle wind, and scarce a sheet started all the way through the North Sea, we sat there (only now and again walking to and fro for warmth) from the first blink of the sun till eight or nine at night under the clear stars.

The merchants or Captain Sang would sometimes glance and smile upon us, or pass a merry word or two and give us the go-by again; but the most part of the time they were deep in herring and chintzes and linen, or in computations of the slowness of the passage, and left us to our own concerns, which were very little important to any but ourselves.
At the first, we had a great deal to say, and thought ourselves pretty witty; and I was at a little pains to be the _beau_, and she (I believe) to play the young lady of experience.

But soon we grew plainer with each other; I laid aside my high, clipped English (what little there was of it) and forgot to make my Edinburgh bows and scrapes; she upon her side, fell into a sort of kind familiarity; and we dwelt together like those of the same household, only (upon my side) with a more deep emotion.
About the same time, the bottom seemed to fall out of our conversation, and neither one of us the less pleased.

Whiles she would tell me old wives' tales, of which she had a wonderful variety, many of them from my friend red-headed Niel.

She told them very pretty, and they were pretty enough childish tales; but the pleasure to myself was in the sound of her voice, and the thought that she was telling and I listening.