"Why? When you went South, Mrs. Pentle, you left a man in your place to give orders."
"Mr. Henston? What of him?"
"Him!" Peter looked down at his cap, twirled it on a finger, looked at Mrs. Pentle, and then: "Him! Honest, Mrs. Pentle, if we had him out on the fishin'-grounds we wouldn't cut him up for bait!"
Peter went back to his vessel and Mrs. Pentle to her car.
"I ordered my house opened to-day. I'll run over there," she told Mr. Duncan.
It was a clear day with a fresh breeze from the west. She must have seen, when she looked, the whitecaps in the harbor as her car rolled over the road.
John Ferguson, up in his lookout, saw her car roll up to her gate. John could also see the reflection of the fresh fire in the grate in her den, the fresh pot of tea beside the window-seat. And no doubt she could see, as she sipped her tea, John Ferguson through an air-port of his aerie.
However, the Celia Pentle was sailing out to sea and John was entering her—Celia Pentle, Peter Crudden, Master, with the date, in his book—and was reading the entry over to himself when Mrs. Pentle came in.
The harbor had grown whiter under the little crests of the tossing seas, and outside the point they were rolling yet higher and higher.
"Isn't it rough weather to be sailing, John?" she asked.