His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him by her slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms, he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'd have loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that young butter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him get the boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back to the stern.
Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff, attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl look straight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft bright glance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from the oars.
Curtly he demanded, "You do like candy, after all?"
"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said with that indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say, 'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'"
"Is that so?"
"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, to become her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift—from Him!
As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, the little slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between her hands; touched the bow of it.
"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked.
All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear any ribbons."
"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's that little pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar at the back?"