"——Oh, a topping time!" he said, as we moved out over the green, clear water, through which glimmered to us the broken pots and pans of Eyries that lay below. "Any amount of fish going. We've had to give away no end."
"I should like to hear what you've been giving Mr. Chichester to eat?" said Lady Derryclare suavely.
"Well, there was the leg of mutton that we took with us; he ate that pretty well; and a sort of a hash next day, fair to middling."
"And after that?" said his mother, with polite interest.
"Well, after that," said Bill, leaning his elbows on his sculls and ticking off the items on his fingers, "we had boiled pollack, and fried pollack, and pollack réchauffé aux fines herbes—onions, you know——"
Bill broke off artistically, and I recalled to myself a saying of an American sage, "Those that go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord, but those that go down to the sea in cutters see hell."
"He went ashore yesterday," said Bill, resuming his narrative and the sculls, "and came aboard with a pig's face and a pot of jam that he got at the pub, and I say!—that pig's face!—Phew! My aunt!"
"'Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been,'" quoted Lady Derryclare.
Philippa shuddered aloud.
"But he's going to come level to-day," went on Bill; "he's standing us all lunch at the Ecclestown Hotel, Ronnie's skipper and all. He spent a good half-hour writing out a menu, and Ronnie took it over last night. We had tea on board Ronnie's ship, you know."