We had telegraphed ahead for a motor boat to meet us and take us over to Paris Island, and we found it waiting; quite a handsome boat named the Swallow, a name which Tish later observed evidently did not refer to the bird of that sort, but to other qualities it possessed.
“Swallow!” she snorted. “It’s well named. The thing tried to swallow the whole Atlantic Ocean.”
It was in charge of a young fisherman named Christopher Columbus Jefferson Spudd.
“It sounds rather like a coal bucket falling down the cellar stairs,” said Lily May, giving him a cold glance.
And indeed he looked very queer. He had a nice face and a good figure, but his clothes were simply horrible. He wore a checked suit with a short coat, very tight at the waist, and pockets with buttons on everywhere. And he had a baby-blue necktie and a straw hat with a fancy ribbon on it, and too small for his head.
Lily May put her hand up as if he dazzled her, and said, “What do we call you if we want you? If we ever do,” she added unpleasantly.
“Just call me anything you like, miss,” he said with a long look at her, “and I’ll come running. I kind of like Christopher myself.”
“You would!” said Lily May, and turned her back on him.
But, as Tish said that night, we might as well employ him as anyone else.
“Do what we will,” she said, “we might as well recognize the fact that the presence of Lily May is to the other sex what catnip is to a cat. It simply sets them rolling. And,” she added, “if it must be somebody, better Christopher, who is young and presumably unattached, than an older man with a wife and children. Besides, his boat is a fast one, and we shall lose no time getting to and from the fishing grounds.”