They found very little to say during the twenty minutes he had to spend with her before the tender took him back to the shore. He was feeling very saddened, and at the same time anxious to give her excellent, fatherly advice, for he suddenly realized her abysmal ignorance when he saw her standing smiling with an air of pleased expectancy among all these strangers, waiting, as she had said, to love them all and take them all under her wing. Twice he started nervously to warn her—and each time she interrupted him joyously.
"Doctor, just come and peep into this door! Look, millions and millions of shiny rods and wheels and things. Oh aren't engines the most beautiful things on earth? Look at them—not an inch to waste in them! I wish I could be an engineer."
The next minute the first bell rang to warn visitors to be getting their farewells over, and he started again, shyly and hesitatingly:
"Marcella—I'd be careful."
He was frightened of women-folk unless they were ill. He could talk to Marcella about impersonal things very interestedly, but suddenly to become fatherly was difficult. His mouth went dry, his face flushed and he wished he had asked Aunt Janet to come with them.
She seized his arm eagerly.
"Oh look at the nice, kind little lifeboats! They're not much bigger than Tammas's boat. Doctor, if we're wrecked isn't it a good thing I can row and swim? Do you think we might get wrecked? I'd have that nice little neat boat the third along and rescue the women and children! If the boat gets full I'll hop out and swim—and if sharks come along I'll tell them what Aunt Janet said about Hoodie. I think I'd be tough, don't you?"
Her face clouded at mention of her aunt and Hoodie and the second bell rang out.
"Only three more minutes," called a steward close to Marcella's side. "All for the shore ready, please!"
"You'll be looking after Aunt Janet, doctor?" she said gravely. "And Wullie? He'll miss me—if you'd make it possible to call and have a few words with him at the hut when you're passing."