To her annoyance, he appeared neither surprised nor dismayed.
"It's just another step in the journey," he said carelessly. "I'll admit that this license game is sometimes a spoil-sport on romance. But you haven't got me there. You'll agree! You'll step right up to the captain's office and take your little oath without saying a word. A good pal never welches."
"I shall most certainly turn you over to the police at the first opportunity."
"No," he said confidently, with a shake of his head; "you won't do anything of the kind. Why, ma'am, you're the pal who keeps me out of the hands of the police! You're an expert at it. I'm proud of you.
"You see, if one of us got pinched, the other would have to go along, too; I'm strong for sticking together. You understand—for better or for worse, ma'am. I think that's the way they say it.
"And if they should happen to pinch you, it would be real embarrassing, I expect. They'd start finding things out, maybe; all about lots of things that have happened to you and me. My, but that would be a piece for the papers! Head-lines and pictures and artists drawing little sketches of Rosalind, the 'Regal Lady,' sitting in a tree and burgling a house and bossing a gas-engine and—"
"Stop!"
"Oh, all right; I'll stop! I expected you to get the idea. You're not much of a hand for getting laughed at, I notice. And folks might laugh if they read the papers. You've got a kind of a long name for a big-type head-line, too; some printer-chap might chop it down to Rosie in order to make it fit."
The boatman grinned and reached over to advance the spark.
Rosalind turned her back upon him—this One-Cylinder Sam who meant to marry her—and gazed despairingly across the water. By sheer perversity of fate, there was not a boat within half a mile. Ogdensburg meant a run of several hours, even at the best gait of the Fifty-Fifty. It might be dark when they arrived. She imagined the panic on Witherbee's Island when nightfall came without her.