“Done?” said the boy, with a moment’s hesitation; and then a flush of decision sprang into his face. “Ask him to come down. Yes, I will speak to him, and tell him that Lavender is on the island. Perhaps he meant to go into the house; who knows? If he did not, let us make him.”
“All right?” said Johnny; “let’s go a buster.”
Then he called up the companion to Pate to send the gentleman below, while he flung a few things aside to make the place more presentable. Johnny had been engaged a few minutes before in sewing a button on a woolen shirt, and that article of attire does not look well beside a breakfast-table.
His visitors began to descend the narrow wooden steps, and presently Mackenzie was heard to say, “Tek great care, Sheila; the brass is ferry slippery.”
“Oh, thunder!” Johnny said, looking at Mosenberg.
“Good morning, Mr. Eyre,” said the old King of Borva, stooping to get into the cabin; “it is a rough day you are getting. Sheila, mind your head till you have passed the door.”
Mackenzie came forward to shake hands, and, in doing so, caught sight of Mosenberg. The whole truth flashed upon him in a moment, and he instantaneously turned to Sheila, and said, quickly, “Sheila, go up on deck for a moment.”
But she, too, had seen the lad, and she came forward, with a pale face, but with a perfectly self-possessed manner, and said, “How do you do? It is a surprise your coming to the island, but you often used to talk of it.”
“Yes,” he stammered, as he shook hands with her and her father, “I often wished to come here. What a wild place it is! And have you lived here, Mrs. Lavender, all the time since you left London?”
“Yes, I have.”