Jack set the sail, and they began to move swiftly southward. The breeze was strong, and had already raised waves over which the boat sprang, striking a billow before she cut it, with a splash which echoed in the heart with a thousand invigorating memories. It was going to be what Mildred called a "jouncy" sail, and Clover, leaning back amid the boat's cushions, would have been supremely content could her mind have been set at rest upon one point.
Jack, unconscious of her reservation, bared his head and, holding the tiller with one hand, waved the other toward his companion. "Now I am at home," he declared.
Clover smiled and nodded in silence. She regarded him with less complacence than she had felt half an hour before. It was passing strange to feel a little shy and uncomfortable as she looked at Jack,—not to be able to chaff him concerning the little mustache that was a new acquisition, and which scarcely shaded his mouth.
The Flirt's white wings bore them past the dark pines on the shore, past the sea-wall of the pleasant park, and the canal which fed its little lakelets. Then on, past sandy beach and wild wood where the children picked flowers in early summer, past sloughs where adventurous boys skated in winter,—a deserted, unpromising, monotonously level bit of country, surely, to be chosen as a cynosure for the eyes of all nations; to be destined to become "the dazzling focus of a world's activity."
Clover, as she gazed, saw only her old playground. No vision came to her of a white city, lovely and unsubstantial as though fashioned from the clouds of heaven, and holy because the offering of the best of men's hearts and brains. No such foreshadowing came to blot out and lift her above her personal hopes and fears. She was recalled from absently viewing the landscape by Jack's cheery voice.
"Shall we put about?" he asked.
"Yes, we might as well," she replied, and as she lowered her head the boom swung over.
"I hope you won't get wet," he continued apologetically, for the spray was flying high and higher. "This wind is growing to be too much of a good thing. You must excuse my preoccupation, but I'm trying not to let you be drenched."
"Oh, never mind me," replied Clover. "You know you always said I was almost as good as a boy. I'm not going to lose my reputation on account of a few pints of water, I assure you."
"If I had only put in a reef," said Jack regretfully, "and you had your waterproof."