“I’m going to stay with you.”
“Go back.”
“No. See, I’m wrapped up splendidly. And here are oilskins for you.”
Indeed, a quaint figure she made of it, in a rain-coat miles too big for her slender body, and a sou’wester hat, somewhere discovered, fairly engulfing her little head.
For the first time that night, he laughed boyishly. “You dear child! You mustn’t stay, though.”
“Put these on, Bob White. Perhaps you’ll get dry underneath.”
Still keeping a controlling hand on the wheel, he managed with Betty’s help to encase himself in the fisherman’s oilskins she had found.
“Now, then,” he said, “you must go in.”
For answer, she seated herself beside him. “No, I want to stay here. I’m afraid to be alone in there—with you out here, and the dreadful black water all about.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”