critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
said, "If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout,
I will put on my gloves."

She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and,
with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.

"You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your hands,
Sheila," said her companion.

"I do not now," she said, "but Frank would be displeased to see my
hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands."

What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender's delicate hands he was not
going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment
to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great
satisfaction and content.

And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this
brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away
to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of
smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard: the only
sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at
the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The
south wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white
sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed
strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a
town close by--that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the
noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to
windward, there was no more trace of city life--only the great
blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far
horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the
line where the sky and ocean met.

"Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?" said Ingram,
getting out his pipe.

"Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must attend to
the boat."

"Don't you feel at home in her yet?" he asked.

"I am not afraid of her," said Sheila, regarding the lines of the
small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, "but she is very narrow in
the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose
they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and
no narrows to go through."

"It doesn't remind you of Lewis, does it?" he said, filling his pipe
all the same.

"A little--out there it does," she said,