But Lettice was inflexible. The tide would be lower she said by the time they started; and Maurice had to shove the boat out again, and succeeded, after a couple of vain attempts, in jerking the anchor off her bow on to a holding bottom.
"Oh, well," he said cheerfully, eyeing the result of his labour, while he unpacked the luncheon, "she looks very well out there; only I wish I'd put up the sail."
"Are you quite mad to-day?" the girl asked.
She sat watching him with an air of grave amusement; her feet drawn up and her hands clasped below her knees. She wore a white serge coat and skirt, with a biscuit-coloured silk shirt and a ribbon of the same shade round her sailor hat. She looked much younger than her twenty-three years, though the baby-fairness of her hair and skin were sobered by the quiet depths of her gray eyes.
"I'm never mad," said Caragh to her question, holding up the red length of a lobster against the sky, "but sometimes, with you, I'm less distressingly sane than usual."
Lettice, her hands fallen to her ankles, watched him sideways, with one temple resting on her knee.
"That's the reflection of my foolishness, I suppose?" she said.
"Possibly!" he assented; "I'm very highly polished."
He was sitting with his feet towards the sea, unpacking the hamper on to a spread cloth beside him. He viewed the result appreciatively.
"Two bells!" he announced to Lettice. "We're going to do ourselves well."