"He's fat and lazy," said Ninian.
"He goes to sleep in the shafts," Mary added, running out of the drawing-room on Ninian's heels.
6
Boveyhayne Bay is a little bay within the very large bay that is guarded at one end by Portland Bill and at the other end by Start Point. It lies in the shelter of two white cliffs which keep its water quiet even when the sea outside is rough, and so it is a fine home for fishermen though there is no harbour and the trawlers have to be hauled up the shingly beach every night. Nowhere else on that coast are chalk cliffs to be found, and the sudden whiteness of Boveyhayne Head and the White Cliff shining out of the red clay of the adjoining cliffs is a sign to sailors, passing down the Channel on their homeward beat, that they are off the coast of Devonshire. Mrs. Graham talked to Henry about the fishermen as they drove down Bovey Lane towards the village.
"I love Boveyhayne," she said, "because the people are so fine. They rely on themselves far more than any other people I know. That's because they're fishermen, I suppose, and have no employers. They work for themselves ... and it's frightfully hard work too. People come to Boveyhayne in the summer, but they can't spoil it because the villagers don't depend on visitors for a living: they depend on themselves ... and the sea. There isn't a man in Boveyhayne who is pretending to be a fisherman and is really a cadger on summer visitors. Some of them won't be bothered to take people out in rowing-boats—they feel that that is work for the old. I used to wonder," she went on, "why it was that I didn't really like the villagers in other places, but I never found out why until I came to Boveyhayne, and it was simply because I felt instinctively that they were spongers ... those other people ... that they hadn't any real work to do, and that they were living on us like ... like ticks on a sheep. The Boveyhayne men are splendid men. It wouldn't make any difference ... much difference, anyhow ... to them if another visitor never came to the place. And that is how it ought to be in every village in England!"
Henry was not quite certain that he understood all that she was saying, but he liked to listen to her, and so he did not interrupt her, except to say "Yes" and "I suppose so" when it seemed that she was waiting for him to say something.
"Do you like being in England?" she asked him suddenly.
"Oh, yes," he answered.
"Would you rather be in England than in Ireland?"
He did not know. He liked being at home with his father, but he also liked being at Rumpell's with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian, and now he felt that he would like to be at Boveyhayne with Mrs. Graham and Mary.