They were very magpies, too, in the snapping up of treasure-trove.
"We won't call it stealing," said Blair soothingly to John MacNeil, the carpenter, who was complaining for the twentieth time of missing tools. "They don't look on it in that light, you see, John."
"Thievin' blayguards!" said John dourly, minus another tool.
"We'll teach them better soon. Meanwhile, leave nothing lying about if you can help it, and give them no opportunities. They are so in the habit of picking up anything they want that it's become part of their nature."
"Juist thievin' blayguards! I'd clour their heads if I could catch 'em at it, but it'd need eyes all round to be upsides with 'em."
And when, now and again, John did catch them at it, and proceeded to clour their heads, they took it quite good-humouredly, and surrendered their prize with a grin, and bore no malice.
It was a strange right-about-face in the lives of the ladies, and many a laugh they had over it.
"Jean, my dear," said Aunt Jannet one day, when all four of them were busily washing and wringing out clothes at the mouth of the river, "this is a change from Hyde Park, isn't it?" At which, and the incongruity of associations which sprang up in them at her words, they all broke into laughter.
Straight in front lay the placid stretch of the lagoon, pulsing softly to the broken influx through the gap in the reef; beyond it, the crisp, white leaping hedge of foam along the reef itself; beyond that, the infinite expanse of sea and sky, and the far-away white line where upper and lower blue met and kissed: on the one side, the bold green shoulders of the mountain, feathered with slow-swinging palms, solemn, mysterious, just a trifle threatening, since Ra'a lived there; on the beach beyond, a mixed company of brown men and white, busy at boat-building, with spasmodic outbreaks of "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im!" to the tapping of the hammers: on the other side, the tumbled rocks of the ridge and the ceaseless growl of the surf; behind them the white houses of the mission, the bosky valley, peeps of native houses, sounds of women's voices and children's laughter.
"It is certainly a wider outlook," said Jean cheerfully.