"Anyone else! My good girl, ask your own senses! Look at her hair! Look at everything! Besides, where is Pamela? Didn't we see her go up to that very place?"
"Addie, don't you think I'd better go back, and up to her and see if anything is wrong?"
"How could there be anything wrong? She looks perfectly healthy--there, she's going away. Well, of all the blazing bits of cheek----"
It was true. Pamela got up, stood clear against a bit of bare ground so that they saw her figure distinctly; then she turned and walked away, disappearing on the instant from view.
Adrian gave a snort--it was nothing less--and boarded the yawl in silence.
The voyage home from the creek and the finish up took perhaps half an hour. Adrian left nothing to chance that night: he locked the companion door, he fastened the fore-hatch.
"You'll have to put up with stinks, Crow," he said bitterly, being most horribly cross; "with the whole of Bell Bay one seething mass of lunatics one has to take precautions."
Crow said nothing. She saw it must be so, also she was very much puzzled; there was the handkerchief of course, in addition, from her point of view; Addie knew nothing about that. However, amazements were not yet a thing of the past. When they two got in supper was just beginning--everybody was collected round a cosy, well-filled table, everybody, and--Pamela, who was cutting bread. She looked hot and rather tired.
"We're just about equal," she said. "I was so sorry to be late."
"Late!" came from the two elders in voices of amazed indignation.