a bit of a tiff betwixt 'em"--Thus
Jennifer inwardly. Then aloud--"Put you straight across the ferry, sir,
or take you to the breakwater at The Hard? The tide's on the turn, so
we'd slip down along easy and I'm thinking that 'ud spare Miss Verity the
traipse over the shore path. Wonnerful parching in the sun it is for the
latter end of September."

"Oh! to the breakwater by all means," Tom answered with alacrity.

For reaction had set in. Not only was the young man still slightly
flustered, but vexed by the liveliness of his own emotions. Everything
to-day savoured of exaggeration. The most ordinary incidents distended,
inflated themselves in a really unaccountable manner. So that, frankly,
he fought shy of finding himself alone with Damaris again. She seemed so
constantly to betray him into ill-regulated feeling, ill-considered
speech and action, which tended to endanger the completeness of his
self-esteem. Therefore, although admitting his attitude to be scantily
heroic, he welcomed the prospect of the ferryman's chaperonage until such
time as her father or her discarded lady-in-waiting, the innocent and
pink-nosed Bilson, should effect his final deliverance.

"Yes, it is uncommonly hot," he repeated, while, with both arms extended,
he worked to keep the side of the boat from bumping against the range of
piles, backing it clear of the jetty into the fairway of the river. He
found exertion pleasant, steadying.

"Neither Miss Verity nor I shall be sorry to be saved the walk along
that basting path. That is," he added, smiling with disarming
good-temper, "if we're not blocking business and keeping you too long
away from the ferry."

But Jennifer, mightily pleased at his company and having, moreover,
certain scandalous little fishes of his own to fry--or attempt to
fry--waved the objection aside.

The ferry could very well mind itself for a while, he said; and if
anyone should come along they must just hold hands with patience till he
got back, that was all. But passengers were few and far between this time
of year and of day. The "season"--as was the new-fangled fashion to call
it--being now over; trippers tripped home again to wheresoever their
natural habitat might be. The activities of boys' schools, picnic
parties, ambulant scientific societies and field-clubs--out in pursuit of
weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen
burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being.