"Aye, aye!" he responded, in sailor fashion. "You only did her bare justice, Miss Lorton," he added. "She"s a good boat."
Nell looked round at him with a gratified smile.
"She"s a dear old thing, really," she said; "and she behaves like an angel in a gale. Many"s the time d.i.c.k and I have sailed her when half the other boats were afraid to leave the harbor."
"Wasn"t that rather dangerous, a tempting of Providence?" he said, rather gravely, at the thought of the peril incurred by these two thoughtless children--for what else were they?
"Oh, I don"t know," she replied carelessly. "We know every inch of the coast and every current, and if it should ever come on too stiff, we should make for the open. It would have to be a bad sea to sink the _Annie Laurie_; and if we came to grief----Well, we can die but once, you know; and, after all, there are meaner ways of slipping off the mortal coil than doing it in a hurricane off Windy Head. There"s the first fish! If Brownie were here, we should "wet it"; but I haven"t any whisky to offer you."
Her low but clear laugh rang musical over the billowing water, and she nodded at her companion as if he were one of the fishing men or d.i.c.k.
Vernon leaned back and gazed in turn at the sea and the sky and the slim, girlish form and beautiful face, and half unconsciously his mind concentrated itself upon her.
She was not the first young girl he had known, but she was quite unlike any young girl he had hitherto met. He could recall none so free and frank and utterly unselfconscious.
Most young girls with whom he had become acquainted had bored him by their insipidity or disgusted him by their precocity; but from this one there emanated a kind of charm which rested while it attracted him. It was pleasant to lean back and look at and listen to her; to watch the soft tendrils of dark hair stirred by the wind, to see the frank smile light up the gray eyes and curve the sweet red lips; to listen to the musical voice, the low brief laugh, which was so distinct from the ordinary girl"s giggle or forced and affected gayety.
The fish were biting, and soon a pile of silver lay wet and glittering in the bottom of the boat.
"Haven"t you got enough?" asked Vernon, with your sportsman"s dislike of "pot hunting."
"For ourselves? Oh, yes; but some of the old people of the Mills like mackerel," replied Nell, "and they"ll be waiting on the jetty for the _Annie Laurie"s_ return. Are you getting tired?" she asked, for the first time directing her attention to him. "I quite forgot you were an invalid."
"Go on forgetting it, please," he said. "In fact, the invalid business is played out. I"m far too hungry to keep up the character."
She laughed.
"So am I."
She raised herself on her elbow and looked toward the sh.o.r.e.
"If you"ll take her to that cove just opposite us, we"ll have some lunch. You can eat fish, I hope? It was awfully stupid of me not to remember----"
"I can eat anything," he said quickly. "I was just going to propose that we should cast lots, in cannibalistic fashion, to decide who should lunch on the other."
She laughed, and pulled in her line.
"That"s a beauty for the last. Do you know how to cook mackerel?"
"No; but I can learn."
"Very well, then; you"ll find a spirit lamp and stove in that locker under the tiller. Yes, that"s it. And there ought to be some bread and b.u.t.ter, and some coffee. Milk, as we don"t carry a cow, we shall have to do without. We shall be in smooth water presently, and then we can lunch."
He sailed the boat into a sheltered cove, and, rather awkwardly, with his one hand, extracted the cooking utensils from the locker. Nell lowered the sail, dropped the anchor, and came aft.
"I"m afraid I shall have to cook," she said. "d.i.c.k generally does it, but you"ve only one hand. There"s one fish;" as she cut it open skillfully. "How many can you eat?"
"Two--three dozen," he said gravely.
She laughed, and placed three of the silver mackerel in the frying pan.
"Now don"t, please, don"t say that you haven"t a match!" she said, half aghast with dread.
He took his silver match box from his pocket, and was on the point of handing it to her. Then he remembered the coronet engraved on it, and holding it against his side, managed to strike a light and ignite the spirit.
"Of course, you have to pretend that you don"t mind the smell of cooking fish; but it really isn"t so bad when one is hungry," she said, as the pan began to hiss and the fish to brown.
"There"s salt and pepper somewhere," she remarked. "You put them on while the fish is cooking; it is half the battle, as d.i.c.k says. They"re in the back of the locker, I think. If you"ll move just a little----"
He screwed himself into as small a compa.s.s as possible, and she dived into the locker and got out a couple of tin boxes.
"And here"s the bread--rather stale, I"m afraid--and some biscuits. The coffee"s in that tin, and the water in this jar. Do you know how to make coffee?"
"Rather!" he said, with mock indignation. "I"ve made coffee under various circ.u.mstances and in various climes; in the galley of a Porto Rico coaster; in an American ravine, waiting for the game; on a Highland moor, when the stags had got scent and the last chance of sport in the day was gone like a beautiful dream; in an artist"s attic in Florence, where the tobacco smoke was too thick to cut with anything less than a hatchet; and after a skirmish with the dervishes, when a cup of coffee seemed almost as precious as the life one had just managed to save by the skin of one"s teeth; but I never made it under more pleasant circ.u.mstances than these."
He looked up and round him as he spoke, with a brighter expression on his face than she had as yet seen, and Nell regarded him with a sudden interest.
"How much you have traveled!" she said--"that mackerel wants turning; raise the pan so that the b.u.t.ter can run under the fish; that"s it--and how much you must have seen! Italy, Egypt, Porto Rico--where is that?
Oh, I remember! How delightful to have seen so much! You must be a very fortunate individual!"
She leaned her chin in her brown, shapely hands, and looked at him curiously, and with a frank envy in her gray eyes.
His face clouded for a moment.
"Count no man fortunate until he is dead!" he said, adapting the aphorism. "Believe me that I"d change places with you at this moment, and throw in all my experiences."
She laughed incredulously.
"With me? Oh, you can"t mean it. It is very flattering, of course; but it"s absurd. Why"--she paused and sighed--"I"ve never been anywhere, or seen anything. I"ve never been to London even, since I was quite a little girl, and----Change places with me!" She laughed again, just a little sadly. "Yes, it does sound absurd. For one thing, you wouldn"t like to be poor; and we are poor, you know."
"Poor and content is rich enough," he remarked sententiously. Then he laughed. "I"m as good as a copy book with moral headings this morning."
Nell smiled.
"I think that is nonsense, like most copy-book headings. And yet----Yes, I should be content enough if it were not for d.i.c.k. After all, one can be happy though one is poor, especially if one lives in a beautiful place like Shorne Mills, and has a boat to sail in the summer, and books in the winter, and knows all the people round, and----"
"And happens to be young and full of the joy of life," he said, with a smile. "And it"s only on your mind!"
She nodded gravely.
"Yes, of course I know that it"s not right that he should be hanging about the Mills, doing nothing, and wasting his time. I"m always worrying about d.i.c.k"s future. It"s a sin that he should be wasted, for d.i.c.k is clever. You may not think so----"
"Oh, yes, I do," he said thoughtfully. "But I wouldn"t worry. Something may turn up----"
She laughed.
"That is what he is always saying; but he says it rather bitterly sometimes, and----But I ought not to worry you, at any rate. Those fish are just done."
"Then my life is just saved," he responded solemnly.