Lambert’s only reply was to grope under the seat with one hand, and to bring out a red knitted cap of the conventional sailoring type, which he handed to Francie without so much as looking at her. Miss Fitzpatrick recognised its merits with half a glance, and, promptly putting it on her head, stuffed the chef-d’œuvre of the night before under the seat among the deck-swabs and ends of rope that lurked there. Christopher, looking aft at the moment, saw the change of head-gear, and it was, perhaps, characteristic of him that even while he acknowledged the appropriateness of the red cap of liberty to the impertinence of the brilliant face beneath it, he found himself reminded of the extra supplement, in colours, of any Christmas number—indubitably pretty, but a trifle vulgar.
In the meantime the object of this patronising criticism, feeling herself now able to give her undivided attention to conversation, regarded Mr. Lambert’s sulky face with open amusement, and said:
“Well, now, tell me what made you so cross all day. Was it because Mrs. Lambert wasn’t out?”
Lambert looked at her for an instant without speaking. “Ready about,” he called out. “Mind your head! Lee helm!”
The little yacht hung and staggered for a moment, and then, with a diving plunge, started forward, with every sail full and straining. Francie scrambled with some difficulty to the other side of the tiny cockpit, and climbed up on to the seat by Mr. Lambert, just in time to see a very fair imitation of a wave break on the weather bow and splash a sparkling shower into Christopher’s face.
“Oh, Mr. Dysart! are you drowned?” she screamed ecstatically.
“Not quite,” he called back, his hair hanging in dripping points on his forehead as he took off his cap and shook the water out of it. “I say, Lambert, it’s beginning to blow pretty stiff; I’d take that top-sail off her, if I were you.”
“She’s often carried it in worse weather than this,” returned Lambert; “a drop of water will do no one any harm.”
Mr. Lambert in private, and as much as possible in public, affected to treat his employer’s son as a milksop, and few things annoyed him more than the accepted opinion on the lake that there was no better man in a boat than Christopher Dysart. His secret fear that it was true made it now all the more intolerable that Christopher should lay down the law to him on a point of seamanship, especially with Francie by, ready in that exasperating way of hers to laugh at him on the smallest provocation.
“It’ll do him no harm if he does get a drop of water over him,” he said to her in a low voice, forgetting for the moment his attitude of disapproval. “Take some of the starch out of him for once!” He took a pull on the main sheet, and, with a satisfied upward look at the top-sail in question, applied himself to conversation. The episode had done him good, and it was with almost fatherly seriousness that he began: