ng for exploration, of her "darling
little island" all the more.

But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for
the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a
close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour,
somewhat rough customers at that. They lived according to their own
traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for
wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to
pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting
foot within their coasts.

To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts
could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the
sorry tale might "go no further"--they more than once confided to Theresa
Bilson. For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous
in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of
possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide;
and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of
condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded
entrance to the first two of the black cottages.--The Inn they avoided.
Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of
religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more
particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who
may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally
malodorous door.

Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of
those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently
give no very coherent account. They only knew that some half-hour later,
with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they
splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the
lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away
with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the
elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases
lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from
the foreshore.

Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the
episode to Dr. Horniblow in extenso. But they succeeded in giving Miss
Bilson a sufficiently lurid account of it to make "the darling little
island," in as far as her charge, Damaris, was concerned, mor