The man acquiesced in the rebuke; and after an hour's labor at the canoe, he scraped the red lead he had used off his hands and sat down beside the craft. The sun was warm now, the dew was drying, and a lark sang riotously overhead. Vane became conscious that his companion was regarding him with what seemed to be approval.
"I really think you'll do, and we'll get on," she informed him. "If you had been the wrong kind, you would have worried about your red hands. Still, you could have rubbed them on the heather, instead of on your socks."
"I might have thought of that," Vane laughed. "But, you see, I've been accustomed to wearing old clothes. Anyway, you'll be able to launch the canoe as soon as the joint's dry."
"There's one thing I should have told you," the girl replied. "Dad would have sent the canoe away to be mended if it hadn't been so far. He's very good when things don't ruffle him; but he hasn't been fortunate lately. The lead mine takes a good deal of money."
Vane admired her loyalty, and he refrained from taking advantage of her candor, though there were one or two questions he would have liked to ask. When he was last in England, Chisholm had been generally regarded as a man of means, though it was rumored that he was addicted to hazardous speculations. Mabel, without noticing his silence, went on:
"I heard Stevens—he's the gamekeeper—tell Beavan that Dad should have been a rabbit because he's so fond of burrowing. No doubt, that meant that he couldn't keep out of mines."
Vane made no comment; and Mabel, breaking off for a moment, looked up at the rugged fells to the west and then around at the moors which cut against the blue of the morning sky.
"It's all very pretty, but it shuts one in!" she cried. "You feel you want to get out and can't! I suppose you really couldn't take me back with you to Canada?"
"I'm afraid not. If you were about ten years older, it might be possible."
Mabel grimaced.