"She wants washing inside," commented Crow, rubbing certain dirt marks with her fingers. "Look, this isn't a tennis shoe--it's a heel!"
"I'd like to catch anybody messing about with her," said Adrian wrathfully, then Christobel suggested it might be the Floweret.
"She sits in the dinghy with a book sometimes you know, Addie, when the rocks are extra wet. I don't know why; probably it makes her feel adventurous and buccaneering."
They got the little boat down, and rowed off into the bay--lovely it was, warm and smooth, with a faint swell coming in from outside, the swell that causes a rushing ripple to rise over the hard ridged sand, filling the tiny rock ponds and making the littlest crabs wave their legs about and scamper for the shelter of miniature weed forests. It was a divine day, and a divine scene; brother and sister felt it and cast off the dreariness that had clouded the morning.
They reached the yawl in an utterly joyous frame of mind, and whirled on board anyhow. Then Adrian said in rather a startled voice:
"Hullo, Crow, didn't we leave that door open? Surely, surely we did, because we both said it was whiffy inside--who shut it then?"
"Wind, of course," said Crow indifferently.
"My good girl----"
"Oh don't, Addie--hurry up--get into the fore-cabin or where you like, but hurry, or we shan't have half a swim. I won't say 'time flies', because it's too copy-book--but I'll remind you that tea is half-past four. Get on."
So saying, Christobel took possession of the saloon--"according to plan", as we used to hear in the days of the War, and Adrian disappeared down the fore-hatch. This was the standing arrangement for bathing--as the whole party of Romilly boys and girls could swim like ducks; they learned when babies almost--it was family law.