Well, whose fault will it be if we miss the tide? I'll sit in the boat, and read that poem again.- Oh! here he comes, out of breath. Well, Jem, did the heroine drop glove or handkerchief? Or, on a second view, was she minus an eye?'
'You were,' said James, hurrying breathlessly to unmoor the boat.
'Let me row,' said Louis; 'your breath and senses are both lost in the fair vision.'
'It is of no use to talk to you-'
'I shall ask no questions till we are out of the harbour, or you will be running foul of one of those colliers-a tribute with which the Fair Unknown may dispense.'
The numerous black colliers and lighters showed that precautions were needful till they had pushed out far enough to make the little fishy town look graceful and romantic; and the tide was ebbing so fast, that Louis deemed it prudent to spend his strength on rowing rather than on talking.
James first broke silence by exclaiming-'Do you know where Beauchastel is?'
'On the other side of the promontory. Don't you remember the spire rising among the trees, as we see it from the water?'
'That church must be worth seeing. I declare I'll go there next Sunday.'
Another silence, and Louis said-'I am curious to know whether you saw her.'
'She was getting into the carriage as I turned the corner; so I went back and asked Bull who they were.'
'I hope she was the greengrocer's third cousin.'
'Pshaw! I tell you it was Mrs. Mansell and her visitors.'
'Oho! No wonder Beauchastel architecture is so grand. What an impudent fellow you are, Jem!'
'The odd thing is,' said James, a little ashamed of Louis having put Mansell and Beauchastel together, as he had not intended, 'that it seems they asked Bull who we were. I thought one old lady was staring hard at you, as if she meant to claim acquaintance, but you shot out of the shop like a sky-rocket.'
'Luckily there's no danger of that. No one will come to molest us here.'
'Depend on it, they are meditating a descent on his lordship.'
'You shall appear in my name, then.'
'Too like a bad novel: besides, you don't look respectable enough for my tutor. And, now I think of it, no doubt she was asking Bull how he came to let such a disreputable old shooting-jacket into his shop.'
The young men worked up an absurd romance between them, as merrily they crossed the estuary, and rowed up a narrow creek, with a whitewashed village on one side, and on the other a solitary house, the garden sloping to the water, and very nautical-the vane, a union-jack waved by a brilliant little sailor on the top of a mast, and the arbour, half a boat set on end; whence, as James steered up to the stone steps that were one by one appearing, there emerged an old, grizzly, weather-beaten sailor, who took his pipe from his mouth, and caught hold of the boat.
'Thank you, Captain!' cried Fitzjocelyn. 'I've brought home the boat safe, you see, by my own superhuman exertions-no thanks to Mr. Frost, there!'
'That's his way, Captain,' retorted Jem, leaping out, and helping his cousin: 'you may thank me for getting him home at all! But for me, he would have his back against the counter, and his head in a book, this very moment.'
'Ask him what he was after,' returned Louis.
'Which of us d'ye think most likely to lag, Captain Hannaford?' cried Jem, preventing the question.
'Which would you choose to have on board?'
'Ye'd both of ye make more mischief than work,' said the old seaman, who had been looking from one to the other of the young men, as if they were performing a comedy for his special diversion.
'So you would not enter us on board the Eliza Priscilla?' cried Louis.
'No, no,' said the old man, shrewdly, and with an air of holding something back; whereupon they both pressed him, and obtained for answer, 'No, no, I wouldn't sail with you'-signing towards Fitzjocelyn-'in my crew: ye'd be more trouble than ye're worth. And as to you, sir, if I wouldn't sail with ye, I'd like still less to sail under you.'
He finished with a droll, deprecating glance, and Louis laughed heartily; but James was silent, and as soon as they had entered the little parlour, declared that it would not do to encourage that old skipper-he was waylaying them like the Ancient Mariner, and was actually growing impudent.
'An old man's opinion of two youngsters is not what I call impudence,' began Louis, with an emphasis that made Jem divert his attack.
Those two cousins had never spent a happier month than in these small lodgings, built by the old retired merchant-seaman evidently on the model of that pride of his heart, the Eliza Priscilla, his little coasting trader, now the charge of his only surviving son; for this was a family where drowning was like a natural death, and old Captain Hannaford looked on the probability of sleeping in Ebbscreek churchyard, much as Bayard did at the prospect of dying in his bed. His old deaf wife kept the little cabin-like rooms most exquisitely neat; and the twelve-years-old Priscilla, the orphan of one of the lost sons, waited on the gentlemen with an old-fashioned, womanly deportment and staid countenance that, in the absence of all other grounds of distress, Louis declared was quite a pain to him.
The novelty of the place, the absence of restraint, the easy life, and, above all, the freshness of returning health, rendered his spirits exceedingly high, and he had never been more light-hearted and full of mirth. James, elated at his rapid improvement, was scarcely less full of liveliness and frolic, enjoying to the utmost the holiday, which perhaps both secretly felt might be the farewell to the perfect carelessness of boyish relaxation. Bathing, boating, fishing, dabbling, were the order of the day, and withal just enough quarrelling and teasing to add a little spice to their pleasures. Louis was over head and ears in maritime natural history; but Jem, backed by Mrs. Hannaford, prohibited his 'messes' from making a permanent settlement in the parlour; though festoons of seaweed trellised the porch, ammonites heaped the grass-plat, tubs of sea- water flanked the approach to the front door; and more than one bowl, with inmates of a suspicious nature, was often deposited even on the parlour table.
On the afternoon following the expedition to Bickleypool, Louis was seated, with an earthenware pan before him, coaxing an actinia with raw beef to expand her blossom, to be copied for Miss Faithfull. Another bowl stood near, containing some feathery serpulas; and the weeds were heaped on the locker of the window behind him, and on the back of the chair which supported his lame foot. The third and only remaining chair accommodated James, with a book placed on the table; and a semicircle swept round it, within which nothing marine might extend.
Louis was by turns drawing, enticing his refractory sitter, exhorting her to bloom, and complimenting her delicate beauty, until James, with a groan, exclaimed, 'Is silence impossible to you, Fitzjocelyn? I would go into the garden, but that I should be beset by the intolerable old skipper!'
'I beg your pardon-I thought you never heard nor heeded me.'
'I don't in general, but this requires attention; and it is past all bearing to hear how you go on to that Jelly!'
'Read aloud, then: it will answer two purposes.
'This is Divinity-Hooker,' said James, sighing wearily.
'So much the better. I read some once; I wish I had been obliged to go on.'
'You are the oddest fellow!-After all, I believe you have a craving after my profession.'
'Is that a discovery?' said Louis, washing the colour out of his brush. 'The only person I envy is a country curate-except a town one.'
'Don't talk like affectation!' growled James.
'Do you know, Jem,' said Louis, leaning back, and drawing the brush between his lips, 'I am persuaded that something will turn up to prevent it from being your profession.'
'Your persuasions are wrong, then!'
'That fabulous uncle in the Indies-'
'You know I am determined to accept nothing from my uncle, were he to lay it at my feet-which he never will.'
'Literally or metaphorically?' asked Louis, softly.
'Pshaw!'
'You Dynevors don't resemble my sea-pink. See how she stretches her elegant fringes for this very unpleasant bit of meat! There! I won't torment you any more; read, and stop my mouth!'
'You are in earnest?'
