“I had to snug up the yacht and he wouldn’t wait. He was up the ladder like a lamplighter almost before we had made fast. I can see him now, with that great suit-case in his hand, going up as light as a feather. He is wonderfully active for his size.”
“Isn’t he?” said Rodney. “But these big men often are. Look at the way those great lumping pilots will drop down into a boat; as light as cats.”
“He is a big fellow, too,” said Varney. “I was looking at him as he stopped at the top of the ladder to sing out, ‘So long.’ He looked quite gigantic in his oilskins.”
“He actually went up into the town in his oilskins, did he?” exclaimed Margaret. “He must have been impatient for his meal! Oh, how silly of me! I never sewed on that button that had come off the collar of his oilskin coat! I hope you didn’t have a wet passage.”
“You need not reproach yourself, Mrs. Purcell,” interposed Phillip Rodney. “Your neglect was made good by my providence. I sewed on that button when I borrowed the coat on Friday evening to go to my diggings in.”
“You told me you hadn’t a spare oilskin button,” said Margaret.
“I hadn’t, but I made one—out of a cork.”
“A cork!” Margaret exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh.
“Not a common cork, you know,” Phillip explained. “It was a flat, circular cork from one of my collecting jars, waterproofed with paraffin wax; a most superior affair, with a beautiful round label—also waterproofed by the wax—on which was typed ‘marine worms.’ The label was very decorative. It’s my own invention and I’m rather proud of it.”
“You may well be. And I suppose you sewed it on with ropeyarn and a sail-needle?” Margaret suggested.