“It is something of a joke, old man, isn’t it? But about that money, you know,” he was beginning, while he drew a package of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Edward which was refused, and lit another himself. “By Jupiter, if here isn’t the old woman herself,” he exclaimed laying the cigarette down on the seat. “Were you looking for me, Grandmamma?” he asked, jumping off and removing his hat with a flourish.
“No, I’m not looking for you. I’m looking for a boat with a first-class, reliable engineer in it, who will take me out on the lake without upsetting me into the water.”
“Here is the one, Mrs. Paxton-Steele,” said Elinor, trying not to smile, as she helped the old lady into the Firefly with Clarence’s assistance. “This is the boat and the engineer both. Will you take us for a little ride, Edward?” she asked, giving the boy a meaning glance.
“Let me out first,” demanded Clarence, who had no mind to go boat riding that afternoon with his aged relative.
“No such thing,” snapped his grandmother. “Stay where you are. You know how to run a motor-boat and if one engineer fails, we shall have another at hand. Stay where you are, but don’t talk. I want to hear Mistress Elinor Butler talk about her home in America, and what methods her parents used to rear her into such a fine, spirited young woman, who is not afraid to speak out when she wants to.”
Elinor blushed. She had planned other things for this boat ride and this incorrigible old eagle was upsetting all her schemes. Both grandsons looked up with interest. Never had they heard their grandmother speak in this way before.
Edward started the boat and presently they were sailing smoothly over the pleasant waters of Lake Worth. Mrs. Paxton-Steele, who was enjoying the ride extremely, had hardly noticed the engineer who had pulled his cap well down over his eyes and bent over the engine. Clarence, bored to extinction, looked sullenly toward shore, and took furtive puffs from his cigarette which was concealed between times on the seat beside him. The English lady had become reminiscent. She was telling Elinor a really thrilling story of a shipwreck in which she had nearly lost her life some fifty years before. Elinor remembered afterwards that she had an indescribable feeling of waiting for something. As the tropical shores receded and the striped awnings on the lawn of the Duffy villa became spots of white, she exchanged a long glance with Edward, who smiled slightly and began whistling softly the air he had composed to “The white swan spread his snowy sail.”
After all, life was an exceedingly pleasant thing to a perfectly able-bodied and quite talented young man, even if he were disinherited by an irascible old grandparent.
“It all proved to me,” finished Mrs. Paxton-Steele, “that courage—” (Clarence laid down his cigarette and began to listen and Edward turned his face toward her) “real courage, is the most admirable trait of character that——”
One of those inexplicable little puffs of wind which people who sail in boats on a lake must learn to expect, gave the old lady’s hat brim an impudent flop, tossed Edward’s cap to the other end of the boat, and blew Clarence’s cigarette dangerously near the gasoline tank. But this same frolicsome breeze was the means of saving two lives. Both boys rose at the same moment and moved to the other end of the boat, one to get his cap and the other his cigarette which he thought had blown that way.