And presently Graeme came along in easy piratical costume of shirt and trousers and red sash, and sat down and lit a pipe.
"We went a bit farther than we intended," he explained, but did not tell her how nearly they had gone out of bounds altogether.
"You'll enjoy a cup of tea. You look as if you'd been working hard."
"There is a bit of a current round that point."
"Ah, you should follow a good example and keep within touch of the bottom. Here you are, Meg—fresh made for every customer. Help yourself, Mr. Graeme. I've had mine, I couldn't wait. Tea never tastes so good as when you're half full of salt-water, and I got right out of my depth once and swallowed tons. I screamed to you two to come and save me, but you never paid the slightest attention, and for all you cared I might have been drowned five times over."
"One would have been quite once too many," said Graeme, holding out his cup. "For then you couldn't have lighted that fire and made this tea. And I'm half inclined to think we wouldn't be enjoying it a quarter so much if a little blue corpse lay out there on the shining sand, and we'd had to turn to and make it ourselves."
"Horrible!" said Miss Penny, with a little shiver. "With your little blue corpses! It's all very well to joke about it, but I assure you, for a minute or so, I thought I was done for. The bottom seemed to have sunk, and I was just going after it when my foot came on a rock and that helped me to kick ashore."
"A narrow escape," said Graeme, with a sympathetic wag of the head. "You've no right to risk your life that way. We still need you. What do you say to being bridesmaid at a Sark wedding?"
"It is the hope of my life," said Miss Penny, sparkling like Mars in a clear evening sky.
"I really don't see any reason why we should wait"—said Graeme, looking very earnestly at Margaret, and behind the look was the thought, born of what they had just come through together, that life spills many a full cup before the thirsty lips have tasted it. "What do you say, Margaret?"