At breakfast next morning Graeme soberly suggested to Lady Elspeth
that she should go conger-eeling with him that day. And the shrewd
brown eyes looked into his, and twinkled in response to the deep blue
and the brown ones opposite, and she said, "I mind I was just a wee
bit feather-headed myself for a while after I was married. I caught
congers before you were short-coated, my laddie, but I'm not going
catching them now."
"They are a bit rampageous when they're grown up," he admitted. "We
got one the other day about as thick round as one's leg, and it barked
like a dog and tried to bite."
"And does he make you go congering, my dear?" she asked Margaret.
"Make?" scoffed Graeme. "Make, forsooth? How little you know! I'd like
to see the man who could make that young person do anything but just
what she wishes. Why, she twists us all round her little finger
and----"
"Ay, ay! Well, discipline is good for the young, and you're just
nothing but a laddie in some things."
"I'm going to keep so all my life. So's Meg! Well, suppose we say
ormering then, if congering's too lively. Hennie Penny's an awful dab
at ormering. If you'd seen her the other night when she came home! A
tangle of vraic was an old lady's best cap in comparison--"
"And how many did I get, and how many did you get?" retorted Miss
Penny.
"I got six and you got seven--"
"Seventeen, and you stole four of your six from Meg."
"Oh well, I found the mushrooms, coming home, and they were worth a
pailful of ormers."
"You didn't beat them long enough. Ormers take a lot of beating," she
explained to Lady Elspeth.
"Thumping, she means. My mushrooms beat them hollow,--tender and
delicate and fragrant"--and he sniffed appreciatively as though he
could scent them still.--"Your ormers were like shoe-soles."
"And as to the mushrooms," continued Hennie Penny, "you'd never have
found them if I hadn't tumbled into them, and then you thought they
were toadstools."
"Oh well!--Who can't take a hook out of a whiting's mouth? Who was it
screamed when the lobster looked at her?"
"It nearly took a piece out of me."
"Who nearly upset the boat when a baby devilfish came up in the pot?
And it wasn't above that size!"
"I draw the line at devil-fish. They're no' canny."
"Do they generally go on like this?" asked Lady Elspeth of Margaret.
"All the time," said Margaret, with a matronly air. "They're just a
couple of children. I keep them out of mischief as well as I can, but
it's hard work at times."
"She's just every bit as bad, you know, when we're alone," said Miss
Penny. "But she's got her company manners on just now. You should see
her when she's bathing."
"Ah--yes! You should see her when she's bathing," said Graeme, with a
smack of the lips. "All the little waves and crabs and lobsters keep
bobbing up to have another look at her. In Venus's Bath the other
day--"
"Now, children, stop your fooling. Where shall we go to-day?" laughed
Margaret, and Lady Elspeth could hardly take her eyes off her, so
winsomely, so radiantly happy was she.
"We old folks will stay at home and talk to Mrs. Carré," said Lady
Elspeth. "You young ones can go off and do what you like."
"Oh no, you don't," said Graeme. "You didn't come here to loaf in a
verandah. When you come to Sark you've got to enjoy yourselves,
whether you want to or not. Suppose we take lunch along to the
Eperquerie, and the elders can bask and snooze, and we'll bathe three
times off that black ledge under Les Fontaines. And if the Seigneur's
out fishing perhaps he'll take some of us with him, those who don't
scream when the poor fish gets a hook in its throat. And you'll see
Margaret out on the loose. She always goes it when she's swimming."
"I hope you won't venture too far out, Charles," said Mrs. Pixley,
with visions of his limp body being carried home.
"Miss Penny and I are sensible people when we're bathing," said
Charles. "We don't lose our heads--"
"Nor any of the rest of you,--nor touch of the stones," laughed
Graeme.
"That's so," said Charles. "We like to know what's below us and that
it's not too far away."
"It's very wise," said Mrs. Pixley plaintively. "One hears of such
dreadful accidents. I'm very glad you're so sensible, my dear," to
Miss Penny.
"Oh, I'm dreadfully sensible at times, especially when I'm bathing.
But that's because I can only swim with one foot at the bottom."
"Any beach about there?" enquired Charles forethoughtfully.
"Nice little bit just round the corner, with a cave and all,--capital
place for children. Paddle by the hour without going in above your
ankles."
And so they wandered slowly up the scented lanes past the Seigneurie,
laden with the usual paraphernalia of a bathing-lunch, and came out on
the Eperquerie.
They established the old ladies in a gorsy nook, built a fireplace of
loose stones, and collected fuel, and laid the fire ready for the
match, which Lady Elspeth was to apply whenever they waved to her.
"If She isn't fast asleep," said Graeme.
Then they pointed out all the things that lay about, so that they
might take an intelligent interest in their surroundings,--Guernsey,
and Herm, and Jethou, and Alderney, and the Casquets, and the coast of
France, and the Seigneur in his boat, and then they trooped off like a
party of school-children.
And presently the old ladies saw them scrambling down the black,
scarped sides of the headland opposite, and then they disappeared
behind rocks and into crannies. Then a pink meteor flashed from the
black ledge, followed in an instant by a dark-blue one, and both went
breasting out to sea. And in front of the cave two less venturesome
figures beguiled the onlookers and themselves into the belief that
they were swimming, though they never went out of their depth and
sounded anxiously for it at every second stroke.
And up above, the larks trilled joyously, and the air was soft and
sweet as the air of heaven; and down below, the water was bluer than
the sky and clear as crystal, so that they could see the great white
rocks which lay away down in the depths, and they looked like
sea-monsters crawling after their prey. And the shouts of the swimmers
came mellowly up to them, and they could see their little limbs
jerking like the limbs of frogs.
"It is good to be here," said Lady Elspeth enjoyably.
"It is very very good to be here. I am very glad we came," said Mrs.
Pixley, with a sigh that was not all sadness.