Harry shook hands with Griggs cordially, and noted that the old man had not changed a particle in the time that had passed.
“Kept the boat all ready for ye ever since,” said Griggs. “S’pected you’d be along some day and want a sail in her. Here she is.”
There she was, indeed, with every line and cleat in place, and Harry felt as if greeting an old friend as he helped Maisie in and hoisted the sail. The little boat glided gently down the river, and out into the wider waters of the bay. As Harry looked about and noted every object in the familiar scene, it seemed to him as if he had hardly been away a day instead of two years and a half, as if the home life only was real, and all the strange things that had happened to him had been but a dream. Yet when he looked at Maisie and found her grown up to the verge of young womanhood, he felt as if he had been away for years and years, and hardly knew the dainty lady who sat on the windward side and trimmed ship as a good sailor should. He was thoughtful and silent until Maisie looked up at him roguishly, and said,—
“Well, why don’t you tell me all about it? It must be something very serious that keeps you silent so long. You used to chatter fast enough. Is it an Eskimo young lady?”
Harry laughed. “I’ve seen Eskimo young ladies,” he said, “though I wasn’t thinking of them at just that moment. Some of them are quite pretty, too,”—Maisie pouted a bit at this,—“though they don’t dress in what you would call good taste.”
“Tell me about them, tell me all about everything,” said Maisie, and Harry, nothing loth, launched into stories of his adventures, and the strange sights he had seen, that lasted till it was time they were home for lunch. He was modest in relating his own share in the dangers and excitements, but Maisie saw through this and gave him perhaps a larger share of credit than he deserved. How strong and handsome he was, she thought. Of course he had been brave and noble, and now her eyes filled with sudden tears, and again shone with excitement and admiration, as he told of being lost in the Arctic pack, battling with the highbinders, and being chased by the river ice on the Kowak.
And so this modern Desdemona listened to her sun-bronzed Othello until the boat had swung gently back with the tide almost opposite the cottages at Germantown.
There Harry finished the tale, and Maisie noted that they were almost back again, with a sigh. A sudden impulse seized her.
“Let me take the boat in to the landing,” she said. “There isn’t much wind.”