The Admiral laughed. He had not the slightest hesitation about allowing Bob and Nancy to go to Gurnard's Head together. They had been playfellows and friends all their lives, as for their being anything else, the thought never occurred to him.
"Off you go," he said, "and mind you take great care of her, Bob."
Admiral Tresize liked Bob very much, and always welcomed him to Penwennack. He remembered that he had Trelawney blood in his veins, and, although his father had been a Quaker doctor, he made no secret of the fact that he liked the boy, and he often spoke of him as a nice, quiet, clever lad.
"Fine-looking chap too," he would add; "just the build for a soldier. Six feet in his stockings, and forty inches around the chest. But there, although he has the looks of a Trelawney, he has the views of his Quaker father, and it's no use talking about it. But it's a pity all the same, a great pity."
"Well, Bob, I hear you have done great things at Oxford. Astonished the professors, swept everything before you, and all that sort of thing," said Nancy, as presently they stood on the headland.
Bob laughed, and looked rather shamefaced. He was very sensitive about his scholastic achievements, besides which he knew that Nancy thought far more of a "blue" than of a classical scholar.
"You are fairly clever, you know, Bob," and the girl laughed as she spoke.
"That does not count much with you, Nancy."
"How do you know? It doesn't follow that because I don't like dressing like a frump, and because I love hunting and dancing, that I don't admire cleverness."
"It's not that at all, Nancy. I know you admire clever people. What I meant was," and he stammered painfully, "that—that it's—a matter of indifference to you whether I, personally, am dull or clever."