“Those fishermen seem to stick in your memory,” Ruth interposed.
“Is it surprising? You must admit that they roused even your curiosity, and you hadn’t my excuse because you hadn’t seen them.”
“What fishermen were they?” Clay asked.
Ruth wished she had not introduced the subject.
“Some men he met on an island in the North,” she said with a laugh. “Aynsley seems to have envied their simple life, and I dare say it would be pleasant in this hot weather. Still, I can’t imagine his seriously practising it; handling wet nets and nasty, slimy fish, for example.”
“It wasn’t the way they lived that impressed me,” Aynsley explained. “It was the men. With one exception, they didn’t match their job; and so far as I could see, they hadn’t many nets. Then something one fellow said suggested that he didn’t care whether they caught much fish or not.”
“After all, they may have been amateur explorers like yourself, though they weren’t fortunate enough to own a big yacht. I don’t suppose you would have been interested if you had known all about them.”
“Where was the island?” Clay broke in.
Aynsley imagined that Ruth was anxious to change the subject, and he was willing to indulge her.
“I remember the latitude,” he said carelessly, “but there are a lot of islands up there, and I can’t think of the longitude west.”