Since that day I have been out with Pukkie every afternoon, for he must be taught to sail if he has a boat. He is well used to going with me in my dory and he swims passing well for a boy of ten. He will be eleven in October. And Elizabeth has taken him in hand. She sails nearly as well as she swims, and she sails with him nearly every morning; and sometimes Eve and she go with us in the afternoon. I feared a little at first to take so many, for I thought it might swamp the boat; but the boat will carry all she will hold.
I had got to this point in my meditations, and I was well rested, and I was somewhat cooler than I was; and my scythe rested against the bench beside me, and I gazed down the bay at the Arcadia, and I wondered idly about Captain Fergus. If Elizabeth was a mystery, he was no less. He did not seem the sort of man to be sailing idly about in a beautiful, fast yacht when everybody else was busy in looking for something to fight; everybody but Old Goodwin and me, and Old Goodwin is nearly seventy. Fergus is a fighter if ever I saw one, the very kind of man that would stick out his jaw and damn the torpedoes.
Since Tom Ellis is gone, I have no moral support against my conscience—if it is my conscience that makes me vaguely uncomfortable—except the knowledge of Eve's pacifist attitude. I try not to say anything that would give her concern, but it is hard sometimes. It gets harder as time goes on. Gardening is well enough, but I hate to be left alone and gardening. Gardening seems but a poor occupation for a man when other matters are afoot, although it is better, perhaps, than acting as chauffeur for a lot of naval officers. But Tom seems to like it well enough, and says that he has put himself entirely in their hands, and does whatever he is called upon to do, without a thought for the morrow, which is, no doubt, the proper attitude. Cecily likes it too, and spends most of her time in Newport, going to and fro in Old Goodwin's car. I went over with them one day, and the first thing my eyes alighted upon was the Arcadia just come to anchor, and Captain Fergus landing at the War College. Perhaps his conscience was too much for him. Fergus is a year or two older than I am, and—confound it!—there is some fight left in me yet. If there were only something more than phantoms to fight! And this frantic search for what is not!
I heard the sound of a screen door slamming, and looked around the tree-trunk, and saw Pukkie running over the grass toward me; and behind him there came, at a somewhat more sedate pace, Eve and Elizabeth.
"Daddy," Pukkie called as soon as he saw me, "don't you want to go swimming? We're going. Tidda's at grandmother's."
Being indulged, of course, with unlimited cookies and raisins and anything else she took a fancy to. Grandmothers have a talent for indulging, and Tidda has a genius for accepting indulgences.
"I do, Pukkie. That is exactly what I want. I have been mowing. Is your mother going swimming? You going in, Eve?"
"Yes, she's going." And Eve smiled and nodded.
So I put my scythe in the shed, and we went down the steep path, and along the shore where the water lapped high; and past my clam beds to the bathhouse near the stone pier. The bathhouse is Old Goodwin's, as any might guess, and the little beach is Old Goodwin's, and the float-stage a little way out, with its springboard. It is good bathing at that little beach only when high water covers the sand. Beyond the sand are great pebbles covered with rockweed and barnacles.