“Mannix,” said Priscilla. “I thought you were introduced yesterday. Hullo! What’s that?”
She was gazing across the sea when she spoke. She rose from her camp stool and pointed eastwards with her finger. A small triangular patch of white was visible far off between Inishrua and Knockilaun. Frank and Mr. Pennefather stared at it eagerly.
“It looks to me,” said Priscilla, “very like the Tortoise. There isn’t another boat in the bay with a sail that peaks up like that. If I’m right, Barnabas—But I can’t believe that Peter Walsh and Patsy the smith and all the rest of them would have been such fools as to let them start.”
A rain squall blotted the sail from view.
“Perhaps they couldn’t help it,” said Frank. “Perhaps Uncle Lucius——”
“Lady Isabel,” shouted Priscilla, “come here at once. She won’t come,” she said to Frank, “if she can possibly help it, because she’s furiously angry with me for asking her why on earth she married Barnabas. Rather a natural question, I thought. Barnabas, go and get her.”
Mr. Pennefather, who seemed cowed into a state of profound submissiveness, huddled his waterproof round him and went to Lady Isabel. She was hammering an extra peg through the loop of one of the guy lines of the further tent.
“Why do you suppose she did it?” said Priscilla. “I couldn’t find that out. It’s very hard to imagine why anybody marries anybody else. I often sit and wonder for hours. But it’s totally impossible in this case——”
“Perhaps he preaches very well,” said Frank. “That might have attracted her.”
“Couldn’t possibly,” said Priscilla. “No girl—at the same time, of course, she has, which shows there must have been some reason. I say, Cousin Frank, she must be absolutely mad with me. She’s dragged Barnabas into the other tent. Rather a poor lookout for me, considering that I shall have to sleep with her. There’s the Tortoise again. It is the Tortoise. There’s no mistake about it this time.”