Mr Wilkie rose alertly, and Margaret followed. She had meant to go away more quietly, later on, under the care of Walter Petty, whom she noticed lingering within call. He was so devotedly kind and respectful, that the girl could not but have a kindness for him. He would have liked to go, she saw, and he would have answered better for the purpose she had in view; though it was not, as he might fondly hope, to purr soft nothings in sequestered nooks. However, fate and her mother had imposed the more self-satisfied and confident gallant, and she must submit; though she felt a qualm of self-reproach in meeting the other's glance, in which disappointment seemed blended with a shade of remonstrance. Had she not shown a preference for him in the boat over that long-tongued rival, whom he cordially detested?--turned away from his longwinded rigmarole about travel, to ask sensible information from himself? There was no understanding those girls, and no use trusting them. And yet this one was so--so--what was she not, in fact? But it was desolating, all the same. He could not bring himself to join any one else, though there were "fellows" as well as girls who would have been glad of his company. There was his pipe, however, that silent friend, so soothing and so unobtrusive in its consolations. He would have recourse to that; and scrambling out to the extremity of the ledge beyond the steamboat, he sat him down beside the sad sea wave and blew a melancholy cloud.
Margaret and Wilkie scrambled along the shore, made difficult with rocks and heaped-up boulders. They clambered briskly enough until they had doubled a promontory which secluded them from observation, and then Mr Peter heaved a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion.
"What an abominable way we have come, Miss Naylor! I am fairly blown. Here is a smooth rock at last; let us sit and enjoy the view."
"I am not tired at all, Mr Wilkie. Let us get on."
"I do not think we can, Miss Margaret. The shore grows steeper. We should have to take to those rocks lower down, all wet and slimy. It is scarcely safe. Look at the view from here! Look at the expanse of sea! It might be the Mediterranean, so blue and sunny. And those banks of cloud along the horizon--are they not fine?"
"Very fine, Mr Wilkie, but I want to see the island."
"My dear young lady, islands are all the same, and one part of one of them is just like another part. We need not flounder farther than we have come already, to know this one by heart. It is ditto all over--rocks sticking out of the water to support a little earth and a few sea-birds."
"But I have never been upon an island before, except those wooded ones on the St Lawrence, which do not at all answer to your description. They are nests floating on the water, and simply lovely. I want to see more of this one. Our St Lawrence islands are covered with trees. Are there none here?"
"Too exposed here, you may be sure. A gooseberry-bush would be blown down in the winter gales, not to speak of a tree. Besides, we really cannot go farther along this detestable shore. The sharp stones will cut the boot-soles off your feet."
"Then let us go inland. Why should we keep to the shore? The ground slopes up easily enough; let us go to the top and gain a bird's-eye view of the island. No, really, I could not think of sitting down. We shall have more than enough of that in the steamboat before we get home."