Mary hesitated before she asked, "If you please, what is sot over?"
"Why, row 'em over. If you don't take the steamboat there ain't no other way than to be sot over, you see."
"Oh, I see. Thank you. Shall we go to the fish-house now?"
"Why, yes, or you can wait here if you'd rather."
Upon considering, Mary concluded it would be more satisfactory to go, for perhaps Ellis might give her the slip, or, if the big brother objected, she might add her persuasions to Ellis's and so clinch the matter. Yet while she stood waiting for Ellis to make his request for the boat, she had many compunctions of conscience. She had never before done so bold and desperate a thing. She had scarcely ever appeared on the street without her governess, and indeed it was the strict measures of this same governess which made the child timid about confessing the loss of the pin. As she thought about the trip to Green Island with a strange little boy to whom she had never even spoken before that day, it seemed a monstrous undertaking, and for a moment she quailed before the prospect. Yet what joy if she should return with the precious pin and be able to restore it without a word of censure from any one. This thought decided her to follow when Ellis beckoned to her. Big Parker Dixon smiled and nodded from where he was unloading shining mackerel and big gaping cod, and Mary knew his consent had been given.
"It is a very smelly place," she remarked as she picked her way along the wet fish-house floor.
Ellis laughed. "That's what you summer folks think; we like it."
"Fancy liking it," said Mary, then feeling that perhaps that did not show a proper attitude toward one so kind as Ellis, she hastened to say, "No doubt it is a lovely smell, you know, and if I were an American perhaps I should prefer it, but I am English, you see."
"That's what makes you talk so funny," said Ellis bluntly.
"Oh, really, do I talk funny? I can't help it, can I, if I am English?"