"Oh, no," she hastened to disillusion him. "Your Mrs. Kendrue is not yet on our island."
"No, of course she isn't," laughed the Young Doctor. "And there's a jolly good reason why, and the reason is—because she's right here in the boat!"
"What?" stammered Solvei. With frenzied haste she began very suddenly to oil everything in reach. "What?" she repeated vaguely.
"I mean just what I say," said the Young 154Doctor, and made a slight move as of one who would cross one cramped knee over the other.
With all the joy of a foreigner easing his dictional panic with an idiom, Solvei snatched out at the first phrase she could think of that had a familiar word in it.
"Sit down! You're rocking the boat!" she screamed.
"Silly!" said the Young Doctor. "I was once in a boat before!" Quite wretchedly he began then and there to try and recover his old manner, the irony, the mocking. "Really, Miss Kjelland," he ducked as a great cloud of spray went by him. "Really Miss Kjelland, you're awfully rough with boats! Oh, but Solvei," he broke through again in spite of himself. "You understand what I'm trying to say, now don't you?"
"No, I don't," said Solvei Kjelland with her great blue eyes staring straight ahead through the veil of her windblown hair at some far focal point just over the wrangle boat's prancing bow.
Once again a great cloud of spray missed the Young Doctor by the width only of his dodge. 155
"And how is it then about Mrs. Kendrue's Mrs. Kendrue?" asked Solvei quite suddenly out of the gusty sky.