“I would like to try, but I’m no sure it would act in every case. I have come across some women as bad as the men; they would drive their husbands on. Maybe”—and she smiled in a half-wistful manner—“it’s as well to do something worth the remembering when ye are young. There’s a long time to sit still in afterwards.”
Half in banter, and half in earnest, they had given Evelyn a hint of the master passion of the true colonist, whose pride is in his burden. Afterwards, Mrs. Nairn led the conversation, until Carroll laid out in the saloon a somewhat elaborate lunch which he had brought from the hotel. Then the others went below, leaving Vane at the helm; and Carroll looked at him ruefully when they came up again.
“I’m afraid Miss Chisholm’s disappointed,” he explained.
“No,” said Evelyn; “that would be most ungrateful. I only expected a more characteristic example of sea cookery. After what Mr. Vane told us, a lunch like the one you provided, with glass and silver, struck me as rather an anachronism.”
“It’s better to be broken in to sea cookery gently,” Vane interposed with some dryness.
“It’s a poor compliment to take it for granted that we’re afraid of a little hardship. Besides, I don’t think you’re right.”
Vane, who left the helm to Carroll, went below, and the latter smiled at Evelyn.
“He won’t be long,” he informed her. “He hasn’t got rid of his primitive habits yet.”
Vane came up satisfied in about ten minutes, and glancing about him before he resumed the helm, noticed that it was blowing fresher, but it did not inconvenience the party, and as they ran homewards the breeze gradually died away. The broad inlet lay still in the moonlight when they crept across it with the water lapping very faintly about the bows, and it was over a mirror-like surface they rowed ashore. Nairn was waiting at the foot of the steps, and Evelyn walked back with him, feeling, she could not tell exactly why, that she had been drawn closer to the sloop’s helmsman.