Nell of Shorne Mills

"Yes. I should like to be on her," said Nell. "Wouldn't you?"

He smiled grimly.

"I am content with the _Annie Laurie_," he replied.

She stared at him incredulously, then laughed.

"Thank you for the compliment; but you can't seriously prefer this dear

old tub to that! I wonder whom she belongs to? How fast she travels. I

should like to have a yacht like that."

"Would you?" he said, eying her rather strangely. "Perhaps some day----"

He stopped, and knocked the ash from his cigarette.

Nell laughed.

"Were you going to say that perhaps some day I should own one like her?

What nonsense! It is like the things one reads in books, when the

benevolent and wise old gentleman tells the boy that perhaps, if he

works hard, and is honest and persevering, he may own a carriage and a

pair like that which happens to be passing at the moment."

Vernon laughed.

"Life is full of possibilities," he said, with his eyes fixed on the

yacht, which, after sailing broadside to them for some time, suddenly

put down the helm and struck out for sea.

"I thought they might be making for Shorne Mills," said Nell, rather

regretfully. "Yachts put in there sometimes, and I should have liked to

have seen this one."

"Would you?" he said, as curiously as he had spoken before.

"It doesn't matter whether I would or wouldn't; she's gone out into the

channel now," said Nell.

He stifled a sigh which sounded like a sigh of relief, and steered the

_Annie Laurie_ for home.

Nell swept the fish into an old reed basket which had held many such a

catch, and held it up to the admiring and anticipatory gaze of a small

crowd of women and children which had gathered on the jetty steps at the

approach of the _Annie Laurie_.

As she stepped on shore and distributed the fish, receiving the short

but expressive Devonshire "Thank 'ee, Miss Nell, thank 'ee," Vernon

looked at the beautiful girlish face pensively, and thought--well, who

can tell what a man thinks at such moments? Perhaps he was thinking of

the hundred and one useless women of his class who, throughout the whole

of their butterfly lives, had never won a single breath of gratitude

from the poor in their midst.

"Come along," she said, turning to him, when she had emptied the basket.

"I'm afraid we're in for a scolding. I quite forgot till this moment

that mamma did not know you had gone out."