Mackenzie looked staggered for a moment; he had never been so braved before. But he was not in a quarrelsome mood on such an occasion; so he burst into a loud laugh and cried, “Well, did ever any man see the like o’ that? Good whisky—ferry good whisky—and flung on the floor as if it was water, and as if there wass no one in the boat that would hef drunk it! But no matter, Mr. Eyre, no matter; the lass will drink whatever you give her, for she’s a good lass; and if we have all to drink champagne, that is no matter, too, but there is a man or two up on deck that would not like to know the whisky was spoiled.”
“Oh,” Johnny said, “there is still a drop left for them. And this is what you must drink, Mrs. Lavender.”
Lavender had sat down in a corner of the cabin, his eyes averted. When he heard Sheila’s name mentioned he looked up, and she came forward to him. She said in her simple way, “I drink this to you, my dear husband;” and at the same moment the old King of Borva came forward and held out his hand, and said, “Yes, and by Kott, I drink to your health, too, with ferry good will!”
Lavender started to his feet. “Wait a bit, Mr. Mackenzie. I have got something to say to you before you ought to shake my hand.”
But Sheila interposed quickly. She put her hand on his arm and looked into his face. “You will keep your promise to me,” she said; and that was an end of the matter. The two men shook hands; there was nothing said between them, then or again, of what was over and gone.
They had a pleasant enough luncheon together, up in that quaint room with the Tyrolese pictures on the wall, and Duncan for once respected old Mackenzie’s threats as to what would happen if he called Sheila anything but Mrs. Lavender before these strangers. For some time Lavender sat almost silent, and answered Sheila, who continuously talked to him, in little else than monosyllables. But he looked at her a great deal, sometimes in a wistful sort of way, as if he were trying to recall the various fancies her face used to produce in his imagination.
“Why do you look at me so?” she said to him in an undertone.
“Because I have made a new friend,” he said.
But when Mackenzie began to talk of the wonders of the island and the seas around it and to beg the young yachtsmen to prolong their stay, Lavender joined with a will in that conversation, and added his entreaties.
“Then you are going to stay?” Johnny Eyre said, looking up.