“Yes. At least, perhaps you won’t call it an adventure, but I do. You see that boat out there?”
He pointed to a half-open sailing-boat, strongly made, unpretentious, that stood out at sea a little way from the harbour. It had two small masts, but the sails were down and the little craft moved gently up and down with the swell of the water. There was only one person in it, a man, who sat almost motionless in the stern, with a pipe in his mouth. Bayre followed the direction of his friend’s finger with his eyes, and looked at the boat and its occupant.
“Well?” said he.
“She came ashore in that—” began Southerley.
“Who’s she?”
Southerley looked at him with his face aglow.
“Well, ‘she’ is my ideal, and there you are in a nutshell.”
“No, I’m not there in a nutshell. I don’t understand,” said Bayre, with stolid petulance.
“Oh, you have no imagination. I tell you there stepped ashore out of that battered old boat one of the loveliest creatures that ever walked.” Bayre looked incredulous, but his friend went on: “A queen disguised in a short stuff skirt and a plain jacket and thick boots, but a queen all the same. She skipped out of the boat like a fairy: she tripped along the harbour like a fairy. And I tell you it was all I could do not to run after her, follow her, try to get another look at her.”
“Why on earth didn’t you?” said Bayre, contemptuously.