Twice, during the autumn, it seemed as though the riddle would be solved, or at all events the knot cut.
George Hempath and young Harben had gone off to school, but the reduced company still took its fill of the freedom of the sands. Sir George and Margaret rarely failed, and play and work progressed apace.
Boating on that coast was all toil and little pleasure. With a tide that ran out a full mile, the care of a boat, unless for strictly business purposes, would have been a burden. Old Seth Rimmer and his fellows kept their craft in the estuaries up Wytham way and at Wynsloe, where, with knowledge of the ever-shifting banks and much labour, it was possible to get out to sea in most states of the tide.
But Eager, desirous of an all-round education for his cubs, managed to teach them rowing in Kattie Rimmer's shallop on the Mere, to Kattie's great delight, since there she shone at first alone.
And it was there they made the acquaintance of Kattie's brother, young Seth, a great loose-limbed giant of nineteen or so, who helped his father at the fishing at times, and at times went ventures of his own on less respectable lines. A good-humoured giant, however, who would lie asprawl on a sand-hummock by the Mere-side, and laugh loud and long at new-beginners' first clumsy attempts at rowing, and more than once waded waist-deep into the water to set right-side-up some unfortunate whose ill-applied vigour had capsized the crank little craft.
Some of young Seth's doings were a sore discomfort and mortification to the older folk in the little wooden house. But he took his own way outside with dogged nonchalance, bore himself well towards them except on these sore points of his own private concerns, and worshipped Kattie.
Old Seth, you see, had always ordered his little household on the strictest--not to say straitest--lines of right and wrong. Young Seth, when he grew too big for bodily coercion, kicked over the lines and took his own way, in spite of all his father and mother could do to prevent him. And his way led at times through strange waters and in strange company.
He was away sometimes for days on end, and then, whether the little house lay basking in the sunshine or shaking in the gale, his mother would lie full of fears and prayers, and his father was quieter than ever in the boat, and Kattie, but half-comprehending the matter, would feel the gloom his absences cast and would question him volubly when he returned, but never got anything for her pains.
He would do anything for her or for any of them--except give up the ways he had chosen.
When the south-wester screamed over the flats for days at a time it set the ribbed sands humming with its steady persistence. Games were impossible then, and Eager's ready wit devised a means of turning the screamer to account.