mething of the same sort on,
only a good deal more pronounced, you know, and they looked like sham
yachtsmen; and I have seen stewardesses wearing that color and texture
of cloth--"

"But why not leave it as it is," said Ingram--"a solitary costume
produced by certain conditions of climate and duties, acting in
conjunction with a natural taste for harmonious coloring and simple
form? That dress, I will maintain, sprang as naturally from the salt
sea as Aphrodite did; and the man who suspects artifice in it or
invention has had his mind perverted by the skepticism of modern
society."

"Is my dress so very wonderful?" said Sheila with a grave
complaisance. "I am pleased that the Lewis has produced such a fine
thing, and perhaps you would like me to tell you its history. It
was my papa bought a piece of blue serge in Stornoway: it cost three
shillings sixpence a yard, and a dressmaker in Stornoway cut it for
me, and I made it myself. That is all the history of the wonderful
dress."

Suddenly Sheila seized her husband's arm. They had got down to the
river by Mortlake; and there, on the broad bosom of the stream, a long
and slender boat was shooting by, pulled by four oarsmen clad in white
flannel.

"How can they go out in such a boat?" said Sheila, with a great alarm
visible in her eyes. "It is scarcely a boat at all; and if they touch
a rock or if the wind catches them--"

"Don't be frightened, Sheila," said her husband. "They are quite
safe. There are no rocks in our rivers, and the wind does not give us
squalls here like those on Loch Roag. You will see hundreds of those
boats by and by, and perhaps you yourself will go out in one."

"Oh, never, never!" she said, almost with a shudder.

"Why, if the people here heard you they would not know how brave a
sailor you are. You are not afraid to go out at night by yourself on
the sea, and you won't go on a smooth inland river--"

"But those boats: if you touch them they must go over."

She seemed glad to get away from the river. She could not be persuaded
of the safety of the slender craft of the Thames; and indeed for some
time after seemed so strangely depressed that Lavender begged and
prayed of her to tell him what was the matter. It was simple enough.
She had heard him speak of his boating adventures. Was it in such
boats as that she had just seen? and might he not be some day going
out in one of them, and an accident--the breaking of an oar, a gust of
wind--