"Aye," she replied imperturbably, feigning perfect calm, "it's fine! Folk is aye tellin' me o' 't. The hairdresser in Edinbro' was offering me a lot for it."
He sat down on the rocks above where she lay swaying with the long roll of the distant waves outside the bar, her hands holding to the seaweed.
"Goth and Vandal! But you didn't let him have it. Wise Marmie, but then you always were wisdom itself! I remember----"
He was becoming vaguely sentimental, so she brought him back to earth with a round turn.
"You'll no have been gettin' any fish the morn?" she queried.
"No fish!" he echoed loftily. "What do you call that?"
He pulled out of his creel a seven-inch burnie and laid it with pomp on the rocks. Then their young laughter echoed out into the dawn.
"But I got a hold on another," he went on, keen as a boy. "A real good one--as big as any I ever got in the castle pool--perhaps bigger. You see they were talking of the fishing yesterday and they all said it was no good. Not enough water. So I didn't intend to try; but--well, you see, my dear, I got drunk last night--I did--and I woke up about half an hour ago with a beastly headache. So then I thought I'd go out and see if the fish weren't moving, and as they'd put me to bed in my clothes--I must have been horrid drunk, and Andrew, you see, was away with his people--I just took one of Peter's rods and ferried myself over in the boat. It's up yonder. I'll take you back in it, if you like."
The idea was preposterous. Marrion imagined herself arriving at the castle, where the servants were ever early astir, in her bathing dress with the Captain! So she hastily drew a red herring across the trail.
"And was the fish real big, Captain Duke?" she asked.