“I have been watching your progress since early morning,” said Lucy, “and, in truth, I scarcely thought you seemed to come nearer. It was a hard pull.”
“All Trafford's fault,” said Tom, laughing; “he would do more than his share, and kept the boat always dead against her rudder.”
“That's not the judgment one of our boatmen here passed on him,” said Lucy; “he said it must be a sailor, and no signore, who was at the stroke oar.”
“See what it is to have been educated at Eton,” said Cave, slyly; “and yet there are people assail our public schools!”
Thus chatting and laughing, they entered the cottage, and were soon seated at table at a most comfortable little dinner.
“I will say,” said Tom, in return for some compliment from the Colonel, “she is a capital housekeeper. I never had anything but limpets and sea-urchins to eat till she came, and now I feel like an alderman.”
“When men assign us the humble office of providing for them, I remark they are never chary of their compliments,” said Lucy, laughingly. “Master Tom is willing to praise my cookery, though he says nothing of my companionship.”
“It was such a brotherly speech,” chimed in Cave.
“Well, it's jolly, certainly,” said Tom, as he leaned back in his chair, “to sit here with that noble sea-view at our feet, and those grand old cliffs over us.”
While Cave concurred, and strained his eyes to catch some object out seaward, Trafford, for almost the first time, found courage to address Lucy. He had asked something about whether she liked the island as well as that sweet cottage where first he saw her, and by this they were led to talk of that meeting, and of the long happy day they had passed at Holy Island.