"Say--I'll tell you, I'm goin' out on this ebb to Goat Island for
rockcod, an' I'll come in on the flood this evening. I got plenty of
lines an' bait. Want to come along? We can both fish. And what you catch
you can have."

Saxon hesitated. The freedom and motion of the small boat appealed to
her. Like the ships she had envied, it was outbound.

"Maybe you'll drown me," she parleyed.

The boy threw back his head with pride.

"I guess I've been sailin' many a long day by myself, an' I ain't
drowned yet."

"All right," she consented. "Though remember, I don't know anything
about boats."

"Aw, that's all right.--Now I'm goin' to go about. When I say 'Hard
a-lee!' like that, you duck your head so the boom don't hit you, an'
shift over to the other side."

He executed the maneuver, Saxon obeyed, and found herself sitting beside
him on the opposite side of the boat, while the boat itself, on the
other tack, was heading toward Long Wharf where the coal bunkers were.
She was aglow with admiration, the more so because the mechanics of
boat-sailing was to her a complex and mysterious thing.

"Where did you learn it all?" she inquired.

"Taught myself, just naturally taught myself. I liked it, you see, an'
what a fellow likes he's likeliest to do. This is my second boat. My
first didn't have a centerboard. I bought it for two dollars an' learned
a lot, though it never stopped leaking. What d 'ye think I paid for this
one? It's worth twenty-five dollars right now. What d 'ye think I paid
for it?"

"I give up," Saxon said. "How much?"

"Six dollars. Think of it! A boat like this! Of course I done a lot of
work, an' the sail cost two dollars, the oars one forty, an' the paint
one seventy-five. But just the same eleven dollars and fifteen cents is
a real bargain. It took me a long time saving for it, though. I carry
papers morning and evening--there's a boy taking my route for me this
afternoon--I give 'm ten cents, an' all the extras he sells is his; and
I'd a-got the boat sooner only I had to pay for my shorthand lessons. My
mother wants me to become a court reporter. They get sometimes as much
as twenty dollars a day. Gee! But I don't want it. It's a shame to waste
the money on the lessons."

"What do you want?" she asked, partly from idleness, and yet with
genuine curiosity; for she felt drawn to this boy in knee pants who was
so confident and at the same time so wistful.

"What do I want?" he repeated after her.