Nell eyed the _Annie Laurie_ lovingly, but said apologetically: "She's a very good boat. Old, of course. She is a herring boat, and
though she isn't fascinatingly beautiful, she can sail. Dick--helped by
Brownie--decked her over, and Dick picked up a new set of sails last
year from a man who was selling off his gear. Have you put in the bait
and the lines, Willy?"
"Aye, aye, Miss Nell; I'm thinkin' you'll be gettin' some mackerel if
the wind holds. Let me help 'ee wi' the sail."
"No, no," said Nell, "I can manage. Oh, please don't you trouble!" she
added to Vernon. "If you'll give me the sheet--that's the rope by your
hand."
Vernon nodded, and suppressed a smile.
"She'll go a bit tauter still, I think," he said, as Nell hoisted the
mainsail.
She looked at him.
"You understand?" she said, with a little surprise.
Vernon thought of his crack yacht, but answered casually: "I've done some yachting--yes."
"Yachting!" said Nell. "This isn't yachting. You must feel a kind of
contempt for our poor old tub."
"Not at all; she's a good boat, I can see," he said.
Nell took up the oars, but she had to pull only a few strokes, for the
wind soon filled the sail, and the _Annie Laurie_, as if piqued by the
things that had been said of her, sprang forward before the wind.
Nell shipped the oars, looked up at the sail, and glanced at Vernon, who
had taken his seat in the stern, and got hold of the tiller with an
accustomed air.
"Make for the Head," she said. "I'll get the lines ready."
There was silence for a minute or two while she baited the lines and
paid them out, and Vernon watched her with a kind of absent-minded
interest.
She was quite intent on her work, and he felt that, so far as she was
concerned, he might have been old Brownie, or the rheumatic Willy, or
her brother Dick; and something in her girlish indifference to his
presence and personality impressed him; for Drake, Viscount Selbie, was
not accustomed to be passed over as a nonentity by the women in whose
company he chanced to be.
"That ought to fetch them," she said, eying the baited line with an air
of satisfaction. "You might keep her to the wind a little more, Mr.
Vernon; she can carry all we've got, and more."
"Aye, aye!" he responded, in sailor fashion. "You only did her bare
justice, Miss Lorton," he added. "She's a good boat."