“The boys had once a boat,” said Mr. Charles. “You must pardon us for our uncheerful ways. There is not a thing about but what is connected with his memory. They had a boat when they were quite young, before Charlie went to India. I am not fond of the sea myself; it’s a very precarious pleasure; and to run the risk of your life for an hour’s sail seems a want of sense and a waste of strength.”
“Shouldn’t you like to go to the May, Milly?” said Fanshawe, pointing to the white cliffs of the island, which seemed on this clear day to be but a few fathoms off the shore. A sparkle of pleasure came into Milly’s little face; her big blue eyes lighted up; the corners of her mouth, which had seemed permanently depressed, rose like the corners of an unbent bow.
“Oh!” she began; and then paused and looked at her uncle, and became melancholy once more.
Milly was like Fanshawe, she had had enough of the family grief; but she was too dutiful to break its bond.
“The May is not so near as it seems,” said Mr. Charles. “It’s very dangerous in some tides; the landing is bad. Our fishers themselves are far from fond of the May. And, altogether, our coast is not a coast for pleasure-sailing. There are accidents enough among those who cannot help themselves, poor fellows! Many a tragedy I have known on Comlie Shore.”
“But if there is no yachting,” said Fanshawe, with momentary forgetfulness of his good-breeding, “how do you get through the time—at least in Summer—if you spend it here?”
Mr. Charles looked at him with suppressed offence. A man who found Pitcomlie dull was to the Heriots the concentration of impertinence and bad taste. Little Milly looked up, too, with her wondering eyes. Milly did not know what to make of this man, who was not quite in harmony, she felt, with the surroundings, yet who made suggestions which were very delightful, and who had the melancholy and splendid distinction of being “poor Tom’s friend.” She was afraid he was going to be scolded, and was sympathetic; yet how could Uncle Charles scold a grown up gentleman, who was Tom’s friend? Thus orderly age and dutiful childhood looked surprised at one who was beyond all the bonds familiar to them, and whose time and whose life seemed of so little importance to himself.
“My time seldom hangs heavy on my hands,” said Mr. Charles. “If you live to my age, you will learn that time is short—far too short for what a man has to do. I am sixty, and the days run through my hands like sea-sand. Many and many is the thing I have to put aside for want of time; and most likely I’ll die with heaps of odds and ends left incomplete.”
“I don’t see any reason,” said Fanshawe, in his levity; “at sixty it appears to me you have much more certainty of life before you than at half the age. A man who lives till sixty may surely live to a hundred if he pleases. By that time all the dangers must be over.”
“And I suppose,” said Mr. Charles, not quite pleased to hear his sixty years treated so lightly, “you hope to do as much yourself.”