When the black coral was sighted by Giles from the quay, he raised such a shout as gathered an eager knot. In a moment one flung up a hand, palm outwards, to display the doubled thumb. Every hand copied. Christian saw and went hot with anger, too plainly expressed in his dangerous eyes. Yet would he have little liked to see his treasures go from hand to hand.
'Not for present trade, I reckon?' asked Giles.
'No,' said Christian, 'my price can bide,' and he carried his prize away with him home.
Not even Rhoda could admire and handle that coral void of offence; Lois and Giles only. One little branch, shell-pink, took the girl's fancy; she turned it over, frankly covetous. Christian saw by her shy eyes and pretty, conscious smile she made sure he would presently say, 'Keep it, cousin.' He could not. A gift, fresh from the cold white hands of the sea-maid he loved, he could not give straightway into the ardent hold of one who offered, he feared, to him her young love.
So sweet and dear had Rhoda grown as cousin, as sister, he hated the suspicion that she could care for him more than he desired or deserved; he hated himself when, loving her most, for her sake he was cold and ungracious. Rhoda, wounded, resented the change with a touch of malice; she allowed the advance of the handsome idler Philip, no friend of Christian's liking, she knew, though to her his faults were not patent. That gift withheld, on the morrow began Philip's benefit. Giles and Lois looked on, and neither wholly condemned the girl's feminine practice. Then what could Christian do, harassed and miserable, but return to brotherly guardianship to keep a dear heart safe from the tampering of an arrant trifler.
Too fatally easy was it to win her away, to keep her away. She came like a bird to the lure, with her quick, warm response, making Christian wretched; he gladdened a little only when he encountered Philip's scowl.
Compared with this sore trouble, but a little evil to him seemed the sharp return of the public ban for comment on Diadyomene's gift. He was ready to flout it as before, not heeding more ominous warnings plain in bent thumbs, in black looks, in silences that greeted him, and in mutterings that followed. A day came when hootings startled him out of his obstinate indifference, when from ambush stones flew, one with bloody effect; a later day, when a second time he had brought in too invidious a taking.
'I sent no gift!' had declared Diadyomene, with wide, steady eyes, but that time Christian did not believe her, though hardly with blame of the untruth. On the morrow her second gift rose. When the boy sought her again she disclaimed once more; and curious of his perplexity and of his gashed face, drew from him something of his plight. Her eyes were threatening when she said, 'Fling away, then, what you fear to take.' To her face then he laughed for pride and joy that she should prove him. When that same hour came round, he drew up her third gift.
He cared too little that in the interim a mischance had fallen against him; he had at last been descried fairly within the Sinister buoys, and chased by an unknown sail far west, escaping only under dark to circle for home beneath midnight stars.
'O damnation!' was Giles's exclamation on the third prize. 'This won't do—'tis too like devil's luck. Ah, lad!' He faltered, caught at Christian, and peered in his face: 'You have not—you have not—got fee-penny of them below!'