“What’s the matter now?” asked Lord Innisfail.
“Plenty’s the matter, my lard,” said Brian. “The sorra a bit of luck we’ll have this day if we leave the ladies behind us.”
“Then we must put up with bad luck,” said Lord Innisfail. “Go down on your knees to her ladyship and ask her to come with us if you think that will do any good.”
“Oh, her ladyship would come without prayers if she meant to,” said Brian. “But it’s Miss Avon that’s open to entreaty. For the love of heaven and the encouragement of sport, step into the boat, Sheila, and you’ll have something to talk about for the rest of your life.”
Beatrice shook her head at the appeal, but that wouldn’t do for Brian. “Look, my lady, look at her eyes, aren’t they just jumping out of her head like young trout in a stream in May?” he cried to Lady Innisfail. “Isn’t she waiting for you to say the word to let her come, an’ not a word does any gentleman in the boat speak on her behalf.”
The gentlemen remained dumb, but Lady Innisfail declared that if Miss Avon was not afraid of a wetting and cared to go in the boat, there was no reason why she should not do so.
In another moment Beatrice had stepped into the punt and it had pushed off with a cheer from Brian. The men in the other boats, now in the distance, hearing the cheer, but without knowing why it arose, sent back an answer that aroused the thousand echoes of the cliffs and the ten thousand sea birds that arose in a cloud from every crevice of the rocks. Thus it was that the approach of the boat to the great cave did not take place in silence.
Harold had not uttered a word. He had not even looked at Edmund Airey’s face to see what expression it wore when Beatrice stepped into the boat.
“Did you ever hear anything like Airey’s roundabout phrase about a scheme of existence?” said Mr. Durdan.
“It is his way of putting a simple matter,” said Harold. “You heard of the man who, in order to soften down the fact that a girl had what are colloquially known as beetle-crushers, wrote that her feet tended to increase the mortality among coleoptera?”