She stumped off and joined Jimmy Kinsella. Priscilla saw her putting on her shoes and stockings as the boat rowed away. She shouted a farewell. Miss Rutherford waved a stocking in reply.
“There,” said Priscilla, turning to Frank, “what do you think of that? The two nicest children! I don’t mind of course; but I do call it rather rough on you after talking so grand and having on your best first eleven coat and all.”
CHAPTER IX
Frank learned several things while the sails were being hoisted. The word halyard became familiar to him and connected itself definitely with certain ropes. He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances, expect to find the centreboard tackle.
The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again, this time from the west, with the rising tide. This was pleasant and promised a fair run home, but Priscilla eyed the sky suspiciously. She was weather-wise.
“It’ll die clean away,” she said, “towards evening. It always does on this kind of day when it has worked round with the sun. Curious things winds are, Cousin Frank, aren’t they? Rather like ices in some ways, I always think.”
Frank had considerable experience of ices, and had been obliged, while playing various games, to take some notice of the wind from time to time; but he missed the point of Priscilla’s comparison. She explained herself.
“If you put in a good spoonful at once,” she said, “it gives you a pain in some tooth or other and you don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, if you put in a very little bit it gets melted away before you’re able to taste it properly. That’s just the way the wind behaves when you’re out sailing. Either it has you clinging on to the main sheet for all you’re worth or else it dies away and leaves you flapping. It’s only about once a month that you get just what you want.”
It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened on the one propitious day. The Tortoise slipped pleasantly along, her sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla’s feet.