"Mr. Chichester invited us yesterday!" put in a third from the other side of the car.
"I don't think it's pollack he'll order for luncheon," said the fourth of the party from under the driver's elbow, a flapper, with a slow, hoarse voice, and a heavy cold in her head.
"Shut up, Katty, you brat!" said the eldest, with lightning utterance.
The quartette again dissolved into laughter. I said "Au revoir," and withdrew to report progress to my deeply interested passengers.
As the outside car disappeared from view at a corner, the Flapper waved a large pocket-handkerchief to me.
"You seem to have done wonderfully well in the time," said Lady Derryclare kindly.
For half an hour or more we ran west along the southern shore of the great bay; Ecclestown, where Chichester's luncheon-party was to take place, was faintly visible on the further side. So sparkling was the sea, so benign the breeze, that even I looked forward without anxiety, almost with enjoyment, to the sail across the bay.
There is a bland and peaceful suggestion about the word village that is wholly inapplicable to the village of Eyries, a collection of dismal, slated cabins, grouped round a public-house, like a company of shabby little hens round a shabby and bedraggled cock. The road that had conveyed us to this place of entertainment committed suicide on a weedy beach below, its last moments much embittered by chaotic heaps of timber, stones, and gravel. A paternal Board was building a pier, and "mountains of gold was flying into it, but the divil a much would ever come out of it."
This I was told by the publican as I bestowed the car in an outhouse in his yard, wherein, he assured me, "neither chick nor child would find it."
The Sheila was anchored near the mouth of the harbour; there was a cheerful air of expectancy about her, and her big mainsail was hoisted; her punt, propelled by Bill, was already tripping towards us over the little waves; the air was salt, and clean, and appetising. Bill appeared to be in robust health; he had taken on a good many extra tones of sunburn, and it was difficult, on a cursory inspection, to decide where his neck ended and his brown flannel shirt began.