“Now you can take it on, old chap,” he said, and then changed places with his companion. The men were very unlike, but each comely after his fashion. Dingle was the bigger—a broad-shouldered, loose-limbed youth of five-and-twenty, with a head rather small for his bulk, and a pleasant laughter-loving expression. He was fair and pretty rather than handsome. His features were regular, his eyes blue, his hair straw-coloured and curly. A small moustache did not conceal his good-humoured mouth. His voice was high-pitched, and he chattered a great deal of nothing. He was a type of the slight, kindly man taken for granted—a man whose worth is under-valued by reason of his unimportance to himself. He had a boundless good nature combined with a modest mind.
Jordan Kellock stood an inch or two shorter than Dingle and was a year or two older. He shaved clean, and brushed his dark, lustreless hair off his high forehead without parting it. Of a somewhat sallow complexion, with grey, deliberate eyes and a clean-cut, thin-lipped mouth, his brow suggested idealism and enthusiasm; there was a light in his solemn eyes and a touch of the sensitive about his nose. He spoke slowly, with a level, monotonous accent, and in this also offered an abrupt contrast to his companion.
It seemed that he felt the reality of life and was pervious to impressions. He rowed with less mannerism, and a slower stroke than his friend; but the boat moved faster than it had with Dingle at the oars, for Kellock was a very strong man, and his daily work had developed his breast and arms abnormally.
“A pity now,” said Ned, “that you didn’t let me fetch your thick coat, Medora, like I wanted to.”
“You ought to have fetched it,” she answered impatiently.
“I offered, and you said you didn’t want it.”
“That’s like you. Throw the blame on me.”
“There’s no blame to it.”
“You ought to have just brought the thing and not bothered me about it,” she declared.
Then her husband laughed.