"Where?" asked Bill with unexpected promptness.
"Never you mind, just now."
Bill assumed an air of injured but anxious virtue.
"'Course, if you don't choose to trust me, it's another matter . . . but I'd like to know you came by it honest."
"Of course she did!" Arthur Miles spoke up to the rescue hotly.
Bill turned a stare on him, but dropped it, somewhat abashed.
"Oh, well, I'm not sayin' . . ." he muttered sulkily, and then with a change of tone, "But find yer an Island—somewheres in the Bristol Channel—me! It's ridicklus."
Tilda averted her face, and appeared to study the masts of the shipping. Her cheek was red and something worked in her throat, but in a few seconds she answered quite cheerfully—
"Well, the first thing is to pick up a breakfast. If Bill can't find us an Island, maybe 'e can show us a respectable 'ouse, where they make their cawfee strong—an' not the 'ouse where 'e slept last night, if it's all the same to 'im."
They found a small but decent tavern—"The Wharfingers' Arms, Shipping Gazette daily"—and breakfasted on coffee and boiled eggs. The coffee was strong and sticky. It did Bill good. But he persisted in treating the adventure as a wild-goose chase. He had never heard of Holmness. It was certainly not a port; and, that being so, how—unless they chartered a steamer—could they be landed there?