"Take Dearest George's advice," counselled Matilda; "he is sure to know his own legs. There! you were wrong. Just lift that foot, George, and the other at the same time. And, dear me, George!" George's answer being curt.
"Not being a Zeppelin," said Darby thoughtfully. "Round his arm now, Miss O'Toole, and his neck. Put your arm round it, and you too, Mrs. Weston. It's the last strand."
Mrs. O'Hara, who had listened for quite an hour on the previous day to accounts of the perfections of Miss O'Toole from Dublin, now decided in awful tones that the pony could not stand for another moment, and said "Good-bye" heavily.
"I am not evil-minded," said the clergyman's wife, "but I thought better of Mr. Freyne, and that painted Mrs. Weston."
"Even if the girl were pretty!" said her husband. "Go on, James, home. One could understand." Here he coughed hoarsely.
Gheena, who had run down from the sea, came back slowly; through the still mist she could hear voices on the water—men rowing back to the little village on the point.
Crabbit barked suspiciously at something unseen on land, ran it to earth, and came back with Basil Stafford.
"What did you think? Who whistled to you?" said Gheena abruptly.
"War makes the world jumpy," he said coolly. "Might have been an advance patrol of Boches, y'know, coming up to supper."
The day of the first meet of the scratch pack dawned in a grey mist, with the sea whimpering under a shroud of white. At seven, when everyone in Darby's yard was busy polishing and hissing, the mist cleared to a clammy greyness, hot and still. Little Andy, extremely resembling an active mosquito leaping from place to place, regretting as he reached each, that he was not at the other.