Giles rubbed his grey locks in perplexity, and stared at the perverse boy.
'It can't be a venture—no,' he thought aloud. 'Nor none hinted that.
'Well, then; you've been and taken her between the Tortoises, and bungled in the narrows.'
Christian opened his mouth to shout derision at the charge, gasped, and kept silence.
'There's one pretty guess to go abroad. Here's another: You've gone for the Land's End, sheared within the Sinister buoys, and got right payment. That you can't let pass.'
'Why not that?' Christian said, hoping his countenance showed no guilt.
'Trouble will come if you don't turn that off.'
'Trouble! Let them prate at will.'
'Well,' complained Giles, 'I won't say I am past work, but I will own that for a while gone I had counted on the near days when I might lie by for a bit.'
'But, Dad, that's so, all agreed, so soon as I should have earned a boat of my own, you should have earned holiday for good.'