“Why don’t you?” she asked severely.
He looked at her again, the little, dark smile touching his lip, “I’m waiting for luck,” he said.
“You won’t find it here—” Her eye swept the beach—with its tumbling fishhouses and the litter of dories and trawls.
“Maybe I shall,” he said. He looked down at the dory. “There are more fish right there than I’ve caught in three days,” he said quietly.
Her wide eyes regarded him—with a little laugh in them somewhere. “They call you ’King of the Fleet,’ don’t they?” she said demurely.
“That’s what they call me,” he replied. He moved a little away from her toward a dory at the water’s edge. “Want to go out?” he said carelessly.
Her eyes danced, and she looked down at the fish in her pan and up to the sky, and ran lightly to the fish-house and pushed the pan far inside and shut the door. “I ought to be getting dinner,” she said, coming back, with a quick smile.
“Never mind dinner.” He held out his hand and she scrambled into the dory, her eyes shining and the little curls bobbing about her face. She was like a child—made happy.
He pulled out with long strokes, looking contentedly at her as she sat huddled in the end of the boat. “I am taking you along for luck, you know.”
“I’ll never bring anybody luck,” she replied. Her eyes followed the great gulls overhead. “I’m like the birds, I guess,” she lifted her hand, “I just keep around where luck is.”