Never until Degger had come into their life had this thought ruffled Ralph's tranquillity. Surely Lorna Nicholet was a woman grown. She should leave off childish things.
Yet she was such a bewitching morsel of a girl! Ralph moved nervously. He cast another glance at those wondrously white, blue-veined insteps.
She was so slim, yet perfectly formed! The ankles sticking out of the rolled-up legs of the oilcloth trousers were wonderfully sculptured. She sat on the bench with her ankles crossed before her, for all the world like a thoughtless boy. Nevertheless her sex-charm took hold upon Ralph Endicott's senses as it never had before. "Why," he told himself, "what a sweet wife Lorna would be for the man who wooed and won her!" It was sacrilege for a fellow of Conny Degger's kind to be accorded even the most innocent association with her!
"She's nothing but a child in thought," Ralph told himself. "She's had too much freedom. Or have I grown up in this last year while she has remained just what she looks to be—a little, winsome child?"
Ralph Endicott should have looked twice, perhaps. As he turned determinedly away the girl shot him a roguish glance from under her tumbled curls. Then she drew in the tiny feet, and the voluminous trouser-legs fell over and hid them.
Ralph did not understand the new feelings stirring within him. Without another word or glance he started the engine and steered the motor-boat for the narrow entrance to Lower Trillion Harbor.
The sea was extremely choppy at the harbor mouth. The motor-boat danced about, her propeller wiggling wildly out of the water more than half the time. But Lorna expressed no perturbation. She only clung to the rail with both hands, and when a billow chanced to break and dash a bucket of water over her, she laughed aloud.
"Plucky kid!" thought Ralph with pride. "There never was a girl to beat her—never!"
Yet he had by no means forgotten how unkindly she had treated him. There was that time back there in the late winter when they had been cast upon the hospitality of the lightkeeper and his sister. Ralph could not overlook that occasion.
"If she thinks she can pick me up and throw me away again, like an old glove and just as she pleases, she's a lot mistaken," the young man told himself. "I believe Lorna is a born flirt."