"Well—let them," said Harry, shrugging his shoulders. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Not a bit," she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion in its sacred presence."
"What do you want to tell me?" he asked, watching delightedly the colour of her face, the stray curls that the wind dragged from discipline and played games with, the curve of her wrist as her hand lay idly in her lap.
"Oh, it'll keep," she said quickly. "Never mind just yet. Tell me about yourself—what's happened?"
"How did you know that anything had?" he asked.
"Oh, one can tell," she answered. "Besides, I have felt sure that it would, things couldn't go on just as they were——" she paused a moment and then added seriously, "I hope you don't mind my asking? It seems a little impertinent—but that was part of the compact, wasn't it?"
"Why, of course," he said.
"Because, you know," she went on, "it's really rather absurd. I'm only twenty-six, and you're—oh! I don't know how old!—anyhow an elderly widower with a grown-up son; but I'm every bit as old as you are, really. And I'm sure I shall give you lots of good advice, because you've no idea what a truly practical person I am. Only sometimes lately I've wondered whether you've been a little surprised at my—our flinging ourselves into your arms as we have done. It's like father—he always goes the whole way in the first minute; but it isn't, or at any rate it oughtn't to be, like me!"
"You are," he said quietly, "the best friend I have in the world. How much that means to me I will tell you one day."
"That's right," she said gaily, settling herself down with her hands folded behind her head. "Now for the situation. I'm all attention."