"Was he?" he said. "How does it happen that he is skippering a yacht then?"
Old Goodwin laughed his pleasant, quiet laugh.
"He owns the yacht—or he did. I think it likely that he gave up going to sea on account of his wife. He was married four or five years ago."
"Oh, his wife!" my son replied in accents of deep scorn. It was evidently incomprehensible to him that a man should give up such a delightful occupation for a mere wife.
Old Goodwin laughed again. "I'd take you out there if it weren't so wet. But never mind. She'll be in here again some time when you're at home."
Then we wandered the shores until the rain stopped and the sky was a mass of heavy gray clouds, but the sun did not come out; and Pukkie had to go in.
The next morning Pukkie found that the yacht had gone, and Old Goodwin took him back to school, alone with him in the great car. Pukkie did not mind going back. He has become acclimated at school, and he likes to ride with his grandfather, sitting in the front seat with all the clocks and meters and switches and the little lamps like eyes and the levers and pedals spread out before him. There is reason to suppose that Old Goodwin gets some pleasure out of it. That is why neither Eve nor I went. There is more pleasure for him when they two are alone. Old Goodwin and his grandson are great chums.
When I had got to this point in my ruminations, I realized that the great pebbles under me, although partly cushioned by sand and by the dried seaweed which had washed up among them, had been getting harder and harder. I moved, and groaned involuntarily, and sat up—and rubbed my eyes. There was the white schooner lying quietly at anchor, her sails all furled and covered, and no movement on her decks. She lay so still that she seemed immovable; as firmly fixed as the breakwater itself, or as the Long Stone, or as one of the distant islands, which swam high in a bluish haze and flickered in mirage.
I got up slowly, and heard a noise of a rolling pebble; and I turned, and there was Eve coming along the shore. I went to meet her, and we came back and sat upon the bank. And Eve looked up at me and smiled, and her hand went out slowly, and mine met it, and we put our clasped hands down between us.