'What, Phoebe Musset? I did not know you could drive.'
'I can do more than row a boat and catch crabs, Glory.'
'What induced you to drive her?'
'I could not help myself, I was driven into doing so. You see, Glory, a fellow is not always his own master. Circumstances are sometimes stronger than his best purposes, and like a mass of seaweed arrest his oar and perhaps upset his boat.'
'Why, bless the boy!' exclaimed Mehalah. 'What are all these excuses for? I am not jealous.'
'But I am,' said Phoebe who had come up. 'George, you are very ungallant to desert me. You have forgotten your promise, moreover.'
'What promise?'
'There! what promise you say, as if your head were a riddle and everything put in except clots of clay and pebbles fell through. Mehalah has stuck in the wires, and poor little I have been sifted out.'
'But what did I promise?'
'To show me the hull in which you and your mother live, the "Pandora" I think you call her.'