Suddenly Archelaus sprang forward, snatched the Neck from Melchisedec Baragwaneth, and made for the house, everyone crowding after him to see the fun.  At the front door stood the dairymaid, Jenifer Keast, holding a pail of water in her strong arms, ready to souse him unless he succeeded in entering by another way before she could reach him with the water, when he could claim a kiss.  Archelaus made a dash for the parlour window, but the bucket swept round at him threateningly and he drew back a moment, as though to consider a plan of campaign.  He was determined to have his kiss, for through the soft dusk that veiled any coarseness of skin or form, and only showed the darkness of eyes and mouth on the warm pallor of her face, she looked so eminently kissable.  Before she could guess his intention he ran round the angle of the house wall, down to the dairy window, and, plunging through it, came up the passage at her back.  Seizing her by the waist, he swung her round and took his kiss fairly from her mouth, and, though she struggled so that the water drenched him, he felt her lips laughing as they formed a kiss.

CHAPTER V

HEAD OF THE HOUSE

For years Ishmael was unable to remember that evening without a tingling sense of shame.  The unwonted excitement, combined with the prominence which the Parson successfully achieved for him, went to his head and caused him to “show off.”  The thought of how he had chattered and boasted, talking very loudly and clumping with his feet when he walked, so as to sound and feel like a grown-up man, would turn him hot for years, when, in the watches of the night, it flashed back on him.  Long after everyone else had forgotten, even if they had ever noticed it, his lack of self-control on that evening was a memory of shame to him.  He clattered across to his place at the head of the table, and was mortified that a couple of big old calf-bound books had to be placed on his chair to make him sit high enough.  Phoebe and the Parson were at either side, and the foot of the table was taken by Annie, Archelaus, defiant and monosyllabic, on her left, and Lawyer Tonkin, glossy with black broadcloth, on her right.  The lawyer had a haunting air as of cousinship to things ecclesiastical, and, indeed, he was lay-preacher at a Penzance chapel.  Tom, who had taken care to set himself on his other hand, kept a careful eye for his plate and glass, being particularly liberal with the cider.  The lawyer spoke little; when he did his voice was rich and unctuous—­the sort of voice that Ishmael always described to himself as “porky.”  He was as attentive to Mrs. Ruan’s wants as Tom to his, and she, never a great talker save in her outbursts, still kept up a spasmodic flow of low-toned remarks to him, whom of all men she held in highest veneration.