“Stay there, Pavlo,” he said, “while I go up and keep a room at the hotel, and then we shall go on at once to the Red House; and after I leave you there, I can return and see my patient.”
So Pavlo stayed, dipping his hands over the side of the boat into the sea, and watching the boy not much bigger than himself, and the brown-faced, blind, old boatman, at their oars, but feeling too shy to speak to them.
In a few minutes his uncle came out of the hotel door, crossed the sea-road and stepped down into the boat. Then the oars were dipped into the water, the shining drops ran off the long blades, and they were off again.
Pavlo, who was more accustomed to carriages than to boats, pulled timidly at his uncle’s sleeve.
“Will you not tell them, my uncle, to go to the Red House?”
His uncle looked at him and laughed.
“Is not the helm in my own hand, little stupid one?”
And the old blind boatman and the boy rowed right across the shining bay, getting nearer and nearer to the Red House.
Pavlo’s eyes opened wider at each plash of the oars, and he quite forgot to be shy at the thought that he was going to meet new people.
He had never seen such a pretty house before in all his life!