The boy looked ruefully down at the long limbs, all unaware (as the girl knew) how generously nature had dealt out her gifts to him, so that his great size was carried with an easy grace.
'You'll have to bear with it, I fear,' he said, with a shyness that always overcame him when considering his length and girth. 'I suppose it comes of having tall forbears. Sit down and talk to me. What is in that basket?'
'Bake-meats for your funeral, I judged, coming along. Ah! This is good.'
The girl settled on the stone seat, folding her hands in her lap, and turned her face to the sea. She did not at once begin to speak, and her companion, knowing her ways, sat silent. He took the occasion to steal one or two sidelong looks at the profile offered him, and in doing so was assailed (not for the first time) by the disquieting thought that his little playmate was altering fast. The chin was still a shade long, the nose rather short, the mouth still drooped at the corners, the freckles still over-ran the colourless skin: all the peculiarities which Roger had not failed to bring to the owner's notice, whenever an opportunity offered itself during the last ten years, were without doubt unchanged. According to Marion, Roger's progress towards manhood was measurable in square feet. Her own advancing womanhood was much less tangible a growth. Stealthily eyeing the averted face, Roger found himself at a loss to define the change, and not being given to habits of analysis, he left the mystery unsolved.
For a while the girl watched the sea-gulls flashing in the sunlight; then turned to her companion.
'This is good,' she repeated. 'For the first time for six weeks I feel free. All this age I have been in attendance on Aunt Keziah. She left us yesterday, you know, and before she went she must needs turn the house topsy-turvy. Curnow has been at her wits' end. My aunt had the guest-chamber hangings down, and discovered a flaw in the gold stitch; and nothing must serve but that Elise and I should sit with our needles—and—in all this lovely weather—and go over the whole pattern. And then, after that—oh la! I won't talk about it. That is where I've been. And you?'
'Lambs,' said the young man shortly. 'Calves, pigs, chickens. Twenty acres ploughed.' The unhappy expression came into his face.
The girl's grey eyes rested on him a moment. 'Still the same?' she asked, her voice soft.
Roger looked at her and looked away again to the sea, making no reply. His companion waited, sitting motionless. Twenty times in his growing manhood he had tried to shut the door on his sorrows, and twenty times it had opened at the sound of those gentle tones.
'I do not know how long I can go on bearing it,' he said, after a time. 'Last night I spoke to my mother again, and she wept and begged me to wait another little while ... gave me once more, as if I should forget—or as if it could make any difference—the story of my father's drowning. For that matter, what sailor would wish to die abed? But women can never understand that.' Roger poked the grass with his holly stick and went on, not seeing the look of mingled pity and amusement that ran across his hearer's face. 'Do you know that down yonder in the harbour is the Fair Return, put in from Plymouth, outward bound for—oh—the other end of the world. They are picking up Jack Poole here. Jack Poole. And here am I, my father's son, who had sailed to the Indies and back before he was my age; and I am—a prosperous young farmer. Bah! Did you see her, the Fair Return?'