Nell of Shorne Mills

Nell looked round at him with a gratified smile.

"She's a dear old thing, really," she said; "and she behaves like an

angel in a gale. Many's the time Dick and I have sailed her when half

the other boats were afraid to leave the harbor."

"Wasn't that rather dangerous, a tempting of Providence?" he said,

rather gravely, at the thought of the peril incurred by these two

thoughtless children--for what else were they?

"Oh, I don't know," she replied carelessly. "We know every inch of the

coast and every current, and if it should ever come on too stiff, we

should make for the open. It would have to be a bad sea to sink the

_Annie Laurie_; and if we came to grief----Well, we can die but once,

you know; and, after all, there are meaner ways of slipping off the

mortal coil than doing it in a hurricane off Windy Head. There's the

first fish! If Brownie were here, we should 'wet it'; but I haven't any

whisky to offer you."

Her low but clear laugh rang musical over the billowing water, and she

nodded at her companion as if he were one of the fishing men or Dick.

Vernon leaned back and gazed in turn at the sea and the sky and the

slim, girlish form and beautiful face, and half unconsciously his mind

concentrated itself upon her.

She was not the first young girl he had known, but she was quite unlike

any young girl he had hitherto met. He could recall none so free and

frank and utterly unselfconscious.

Most young girls with whom he had become acquainted had bored him by

their insipidity or disgusted him by their precocity; but from this one

there emanated a kind of charm which rested while it attracted him. It

was pleasant to lean back and look at and listen to her; to watch the

soft tendrils of dark hair stirred by the wind, to see the frank smile

light up the gray eyes and curve the sweet red lips; to listen to the

musical voice, the low brief laugh, which was so distinct from the

ordinary girl's giggle or forced and affected gayety.

The fish were biting, and soon a pile of silver lay wet and glittering

in the bottom of the boat.

"Haven't you got enough?" asked Vernon, with your sportsman's dislike of

"pot hunting."

"For ourselves? Oh, yes; but some of the old people of the Mills like

mackerel," replied Nell, "and they'll be waiting on the jetty for the

_Annie Laurie's_ return. Are you getting tired?" she asked, for the

first time directing her attention to him. "I quite forgot you were an

invalid."