Nell swept the fish into an old reed basket which had held many such a catch, and held it up to the admiring and anticipatory gaze of a small crowd of women and children which had gathered on the jetty steps at the approach of the Annie Laurie.
As she stepped on shore and distributed the fish, receiving the short but expressive Devonshire "Thank 'ee, Miss Nell, thank 'ee," Vernon looked at the beautiful girlish face pensively, and thought—well, who can tell what a man thinks at such moments? Perhaps he was thinking of the hundred and one useless women of his class who, throughout the whole of their butterfly lives, had never won a single breath of gratitude from the poor in their midst.
"Come along," she said, turning to him, when she had emptied the basket. "I'm afraid we're in for a scolding. I quite forgot till this moment that mamma did not know you had gone out."
"What about you?" he said, remembering for the first time that he had spent so many hours with this girl alone and unchaperoned.
Nell laughed.
"Oh, she would not be anxious about me. Mamma is used to my going out for a ride—when I can borrow a horse from some one—or sailing the Annie Laurie with old Brownie; but she'll be anxious about you. You're an invalid, you know."
"Not much of the invalid about me, saving this arm," he said.
As they climbed the hill, they came upon Dick mounted upon a horse the like of which Nell had never seen; and she stopped dead short and stared at him.
"Hallo, Nell! Hallo, Mr. Vernon! Just giving him a run, after being shut up in that stuffy railway box."
"That's right," said Vernon. "Like him?"