Priscilla’s reproaches were sharper and less broadly philosophic in tone.
“Why didn’t you luff when I told you?” she said. “Didn’t I say you were to keep up to windward of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat? If you couldn’t do that why hadn’t you the sense to let out the main sheet? If we hadn’t run into the sponge lady we’d have stripped the copper band off our keel. As it is, I expect she’s dead. She hit her head a most frightful crack against the mast.”
Miss Rutherford was lying on her stomach across the fore part of the gunwale of the Tortoise. Her head was close to the mast. She was groping about with her hands in the bottom of the boat. The lower part of her body, which was temporarily, owing to her position, the upper part, was outside the boat. Her feet beat the air with futile vigour. She wriggled convulsively and after a time her legs followed her head and shoulders into the boat. She rose on her knees, very red in the face, a good deal dishevelled, but laughing heartily.
“I’m not a bit dead,” she said, “but I expect my hair’s coming down.”
“It is,” said Priscilla. “I don’t believe you have a hairpin left unless one or two have been driven into your skull. Are you much hurt?”
“Not at all,” said Miss Rutherford. “Is your mast all right? I hit it rather hard.”
Priscilla looked at the mast critically and stroked the part hit by Miss Rutherford’s head to find out if it was bruised or cracked.
“I’m most awfully sorry,” said Frank. “I don’t know how I came to be such a fool. I lost my head completely. I put the tiller the wrong way. I can’t imagine how it all happened.”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Rutherford, “that I ever had an invitation to luncheon accepted quite so heartily before. You actually rushed into my arms.”
“Were you inviting us to lunch?” said Priscilla.