“How on earth did you lose your oars?” he demanded—as indignantly as though she had done it on purpose, she commented inwardly.
Her lips twitched in the endeavour to suppress a smile.
“I haven’t the least idea,” she confessed. “I tied up under some trees further up and—and I suppose I must have fallen asleep. But still that doesn’t explain how I came to be adrift like this.”
“A woman’s knot, I expect,” he vouchsafed rather scornfully. “A woman never ties up properly. Probably you just looped the painter round any old thing and trusted to Providence that it would stay looped.”
She gave vent to a low laugh.
“I believe you’ve described the process quite accurately,” she admitted. “But I’ve done the same thing before without any evil consequences. There’s hardly any current here, you know. I don’t believe”—with conviction—“that my loop could have unlooped itself. And anyway”—triumphantly—“the sculls couldn’t have jumped out of the boat without assistance.”
The man smiled, revealing strong white teeth.
“No, I suppose not. I fancy”—the smile broadening—“some small boy must have spotted you asleep in the boat and, finding the opportunity too good to be resisted, removed your tackle and set you adrift.”
There was a sympathetic twinkle in his eyes, and Jean, suddenly sensing the “little boy” in him which lurks in every grown-up man, flashed back:
“I believe that’s exactly what you would have done yourself in your urchin days!”