“You cannot ask a stranger, Sheila. Besides, the boat is too small a one for this time of the year. I should not like to see you go in her, Sheila.”
“I have no fear,” the girl said.
“No fear!” her father said impatiently. “No, of course you hef no fear; that is the mischief. You will take no care of yourself whatever.”
“When is the young gentleman coming up, this morning?”
“Oh, he will not come up again till I go down. Will you go down to the boat, Sheila, and go on board of her?”
Sheila assented, and some half hour thereafter she stood at the door, clad in her tight-fitting blue serge, with the hat and sea-gull’s wing over her splendid masses of hair. It was an angry-looking morning enough; rags of gray clouds were being hurried past the shoulders of Suainabhal; a heavy surf was beating on the shore.
“There is going to be rain, Sheila,” her father said, smelling the moisture in the keen air. “Will you hef your waterproof?”
“Oh, no,” she said, “if I am to meet strangers, I cannot wear a waterproof.”
The sharp wind had brought back the color to her cheeks, and there was some gladness in her eyes. She knew she might have a fight for it before she could persuade her father to set sail in this strange boat; but she never doubted for a moment, recollecting the gentle face and modest manner of the youthful owner, that he would be really glad to do her a service, and she knew that her father’s opposition would give way.
“Shall we take Bras, papa?”