"Sail a boat!" roared the captain. "I have a great mind to kick over this table! My dear, I can sail a boat, keel uppermost, if the water's deep enough! Sail a boat!" he repeated. "I sailed a catboat from Boston to Egg Harbor before your mother was born. By the way, you seem very anxious about boat sailing. Are you afraid of the water?"
She laughed gaily. "I deserve that," she said, "and I accept it. But perhaps I have done something that you never did. I have sailed a felucca."
"Very good," said the captain; "if there's a felucca where we're going you can sail me in one."
They went to a Virginia seaside resort, these two, and left old Jane in charge of the toll-gate.
Early in the day after they arrived they went out to engage a boat. When they found one which suited the captain's critical eye, he said to the owner thereof: "I will take her for the morning, but I don't want anybody to sail me. I will do that myself."
"I don't know about that," said the man; "when my boat goes out—"
He stopped speaking suddenly and looked the captain over and over, up and down. "All right, sir," said he. "And you don't want nobody to manage the sheet?"
"No," interpolated Olive, "I'll manage the sheet."
So they went out on the bounding sea. And as the wind whistled the hat off her head so that she had to fling it into the bottom of the boat, Olive wished that her uncle kept a toll-gate on the sea. Then she could go out with him and stop the little boats and the great steamers, and make them drop seven cents or thirteen cents into her hands as she stood braced in the stern; and she was just beginning to wonder how she could toss up the change to them if they dropped her a quarter, when the captain began to sing Tom Bowline. He was just as gay-hearted as she was.
It was about noon when they returned, for the captain was a very particular man and he had hired the boat only for the morning. Olive had scarcely taken ten steps up the beach before she found herself shaking hands with a young man.