“That word?”
“The sanctuary and secret word,” said Priscilla. “Don’t you remember I couldn’t get it last night. But I did after I went to sleep which was jolly lucky. I hopped up at once and wrote it down. Now we know what Inishbawn will be for Lady Torrington’s poor daughter when we get her there. All the same I don’t think we’d better eat the caramel pudding at breakfast. It mightn’t be wholesome for you at this hour—on account of your sprained ankle, I mean, and not being accustomed to puddings at breakfast. Besides I expect Miss Rutherford would rather like it. What do you say to starting with an artichoke each?”
Frank was ready to start with anything that was given him. He ate the artichoke greedily and felt hardly less hungry when he had finished it. Priscilla too seemed unsatisfied. She said that they had perhaps made a mistake in beginning with the artichokes. But her sense of duty and her instinct for hospitality triumphed over her appetite. Feeling that temptation might prove overpowering, she put the slices of cold fish out of sight under the spinnaker with the remark that they ought to be kept for Miss Rutherford. She and Frank ate the herrings’ roes on toast, the sweetbread and one of the four rolls. Then though Frank still looked hungry, Priscilla hoisted the foresail and hauled up the anchor.
They reached the passage past Craggeen when the tide was at the full and threaded their way among the rocks successfully. They passed into the wide water of Finilaun roads. A long reach lay before them and the wind had begun to die down as the tide turned. Priscilla, leaving Frank to steer, settled herself comfortably on the weather side of the boat between the centreboard case and the gunwale. Far down to leeward another boat was slipping across the roads towards the south. She had an old stained jib and an obtrusively new mainsail which shone dazzlingly white in the sun. Priscilla watched her with idle interest for some time. Then she announced that she was Flanagan’s new boat.
“He bought the calico for the sail at Brannigan’s,” she said, “and made it himself. Peter Walsh told me that. I’m bound to say it doesn’t sit badly; but of course you can’t really tell about the sit of a sail when the boat’s off the wind. I’d like to see it when she’s close-hauled. That’s the way with lots of other things besides sails. I dare say now that Lord Torrington is quite an agreeable sort of man when his daughter isn’t running away.”
“I’m sure he’s not,” said Frank.
“You can’t be sure,” said Priscilla. “Nobody could, except of course Lady Torrington and she doesn’t seem to me the sort of person who’s much cowed in her own house. I wish you’d heard her going for Aunt Juliet last night, most politely, but every word she said had what’s called in French a ‘double entendre’ wrapped up in it. That means——”
“I know what it means,” said Frank.
“That’s all right then. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. I always heard they rather despised French at boys’ schools, which is idiotic of course and may not be true.”
Frank recollected a form master with whom, at one stage of his career at school he used to study the adventures of the innocent Telemaque. This gentleman refused to read aloud or allow his class to read aloud the text of the book, alleging that no one who did not suffer from a malformation of the mouth could pronounce French properly. Still even this master must have attached some meaning to the phrase “double entendre,” though he might not have used it in precisely Priscilla’s sense.